PoliticalWarfare.org

Taiwanese animators lampoon 'don't touch my junk'

It's bad enough that the Department of Homeland Security's clumsy "security" over-reach alienates the average citizen the way it has, but it's all the worse when the rest of the world starts laughing at us.

Fundamental to any sound security policy is careful consideration of domestic and international response to the measures being applied. Those measures will never please everybody. But when security officials are so tone-deaf and defiant, they undermine the intended results of their policies. That's just what's happening today with the new Transportation Security Administration electronic strip search/"pat down" policies.

No government propaganda campaign to justify the policies will serve a useful purpose. DHS and TSA are now a laughingstock. Too many people just don't take the clumsy and intrusive security policies seriously any more. The last scene of this video, with the terrorist laughing at us, is right on the mark.

Perhaps it has something to do with the government's refusal to profile those most likely to be motivated to commit terrorism, and to make all citizens pay the price for the government's timid political correctness. There's good reason to mock the TSA's ham-handed policies. But in truth, this is no laughing matter at all. Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano is responsible for this mess. She has undermined public confidence. She should resign.

Government propaganda campaign to make public submit to strip searches

A US government propaganda campaign aimed at the domestic population is in the works.

The perceptions-and-behavior-modification campaign is designed to neutralize the American public's opposition to the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) move toward electronic strip-searches and invasive groping of airport passengers.

Caught off-guard by the widening public backlash to the excessively intrusive "security" procedures at the nation's airports, the Department of Homeland Security is trying to disarm the public of its opposition.

(Photo: A Muslim TSA guard, wearing sharia-compliant head covering, gropes a Catholic nun during a "security" search at a US airport.)

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano isn't off to a very good start, saying that the electronic strip-searches and the invasive groping of passengers who refuse a strip search are necessary because of the Nigerian terrorist who arrived in the United States with explosives in his underwear in December 2009.

However, what Napolitano did not say was that the CIA had specific advance warning of a possible terrorist attack by that very individual - in the form of an urgent face-to-face meeting that the terrorist's father requested with the CIA station in Abuja - and that the CIA and TSA failed to ensure that the terrorist was placed on the TSA's no-fly list.

Because of that government failure, the TSA is now forcing the entire traveling public to submit to electronic strip searches, be groped in the breasts, genitals and buttocks by TSA personnel, or be arrested or fined.

Napolitano began the propaganda campaign against the American public with a November 15 op-ed in USA Today. Starting off with the example of the Christmas bomber and the need for a "layered approach" to screening terrorists (without mentioning the CIA's failure at the outermost layer), Napolitano says the strip-search machines are necessary, safe and preferred:

"As part of our layered approach, we have expedited the deployment of new Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) units to help detect concealed metallic and non-metallic threats on passengers. These machines are now in use at airports nationwide, and the vast majority of travelers say they prefer this technology to alternative screening measures.

"AIT machines are safe, efficient, and protect passenger privacy. . . .

"All images generated by imaging technology are viewed in a walled-off location not visible to the public. The officer assisting the passenger never sees the image, and the officer viewing the image never interacts with the passenger. The imaging technology that we use cannot store, export, print or transmit images." (Emphasis added)

Much of Napolitano's points are of debatable accuracy or truthfulness, and a lot of the public isn't buying her argument, or her euphemisms such as "pat downs." (I've been through the "pat downs" and think the term "heavy petting" is more accurate.)

It's propaganda time

So now, the government finds itself having to launch an aggressive propaganda "public education" campaign to manipulate public perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. Here's what AP is reporting right now:

". . . airports have been urging the government to engage in an aggressive public education campaign regarding the new screening, said Debby McElroy, the [Airports Council International-North America] executive vice president.

"'TSA is trying to address a real, credible threat, both through the advanced imaging technology and through the pat-downs,' McElroy said. 'We think it's important that they continue to address it with passengers and the media because there continues to be a significant misunderstanding about both the safety and the privacy concerns.'"

The government's domestic propaganda campaign is just beginning. As far as Homeland Security is concerned, we must submit - or else.

Rapping to the death throes of Iran's Islamic Republic

When a regime is too inflexible to cope with the cultural rebellion of the young people under its domination, the system cannot be expected to survive for long.

In a youthful country like Iran, we are seeing signs that the dictatorship of the Islamic Republic is on its last legs. Especially because this youthful cultural rebellion, thanks to the Internet, cannot be contained.

The regime's latest crackdown has focused on repressing Tehran's underground rap culture.

Tehran police chief Hossein Sajedi-nia explains that his forces arrested "boys and girls" and seized "Western musical instruments" as well as alcohol, which is officially forbidden under Iran's sharia law.

But the police chief noted the real dangers: the organized efforts of the cultural underground and the rap fans' ability to share music and communicate with one another online, both at home and abroad.

Like other Iranian underground bands and their fans, the rappers work hard to camouflage their presence from authorities. "These boys and girls used deserted and crumbling buildings, and camouflaged the place by hanging dirty curtains in order not to arouse suspicion," Sajedi-nia said.

In addition to citing the standard rock/rap behavior that challenge and defy established morals, the police chief said the artists were spreading a subversive message, in his words, "portraying a bleak picture of society."

Internetted musical underground

This blog has long advocated strong international support for Iran's youthful rock, rap, hip-hop and punk underground.

The rappers are far from isolated - and herein lies the danger for the regime. "These bands recorded underground clips and released unauthorised songs on satellite and cyber networks," said Sajedi-nia, according to Agence France Presse.

Where is the Voice of America's Persian service?

Agence France-Presse notes that despire the official repression, Iran's "underground bands have still managed to get their music heard by using home computers to get it aired over the Internet or on Persian-language satellite channels broadcasting from abroad."

This is an extremely important point: Foreign Internet media companies, radio channels and satellite TV channels are vital to leveraging and magnifying the cultural rebels in Iran. Which brings us back to the question, Where is the Voice of America in all this? What is wrong with VOA's Persian-language service and why is it not providing accurate, timely, and full coverage of the repression of Iran's young people, whose expressions seem far more like a voice of America than VOA itself.

 

Videos about Iran's rock underground

From Persian Cats to Yellow Dogs from Jehangir Irani on Vimeo.

Yesterday's post led me to look around for some good videos about Iran's rock underground, and some research about the Yellow Dogs led to these excellent segments. The first one, above, is a look at Iran's young people and how they express themselves through music - with help from supportive parents and corrupt police - focusing on the Yellow Dogs band.

Below is a CNN report on rock in the Middle East. About 1:42 into the video is the section on the Iranian rock underground, with an inside look at Yellow Dogs and the rock scene in Tehran. Following the CNN report is a music video of the Iranian band Hypernova, that just released its debut album, in English, this spring. Hypernova began as an underground band in Iran but is now based in the West and has a more polished look and sound.

The musical threat to Iran's regime

How can we take down Iran's soon-to-be-nuclear-armed regime without firing a shot? There are a number of ways, but the Islamic Republic has been openly betraying its greatest fears: music.

Not just the rock, punk, rap and hip-hop cultures that the regime is trying to repress, but all music. 

Eric Felten writes about it in the Wall Street Journal. In an August 18 piece titled "Why Dictators Hate to See Us Moved by Music," he begins with a recent quote from Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who declared that music is "not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic."

The problem with music is that "it affects people profoundly and can't be controlled," Felten observes.

And lack of control is what the regime fears - a legitimate response from the hated tyrants who rule a country in which 70 percent of the population is under age 35.

Felten continues in his column with recent psychological studies about the effects of music on individuals' moods, emotions, and overall states of mind. 

Some of Iran's best rock groups are making it to the West and performing abroad, even in the United States. The group Yellow Dogs (pictured) is one of them.

There's an amazing popular cultural revolution going on in Iran today - a youthful, widespread, pro-western rebellion against the sharia regime of the Islamic Republic. Time for the rest of the world to get on board.

(Hat tip to SD)

The Case for Calling Them Nitwits (The Atlantic)

Hats off to Daniel Byman and Christine Fair, who write in The Atlantic about what nincompoops many of our terrorist enemies are. In a piece titled, "The Case for Calling them Nitwits," Byman and Fair note, "They blow each other up by mistake. They bungle even simple schemes. They get intimate with cows and donkeys. Our terrorist enemies trade on the perception that they’re well trained and religiously devout, but in fact, many are fools and perverts who are far less organized and sophisticated than we imagine. Can being more realistic about who our foes actually are help us stop the truly dangerous ones?"

Some highlights from the article:

• "Even in the aftermath of the botched Times Square bombing earlier this spring, the perception persists that our enemies are savvy and sophisticated killers."
• "But this view of the jihadist community is wildly off the mark. To be sure, some terrorists are steely and skilled—people like Mohamed Atta . . . but the quiet truth is that many of the deluded foot soldiers are foolish and untrained, perhaps even untrainable. Acknowledging this fact could help us tailor our counterterrorism priorities—and publicizing it could help us erode the powerful images of strength and piety that terrorists rely on for recruiting and funding."
• "Nowhere is the gap between sinister stereotype and ridiculous reality more apparent than in Afghanistan, where it’s fair to say that the Taliban employ the world’s worst suicide bombers: one in two manages to kill only himself. And this success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been using suicide bombers, despite the experience of hundreds of attacks—or attempted attacks."
• "If our terrorist enemies have been successful at cultivating a false notion of expertise, they’ve done an equally convincing job of casting themselves as pious warriors of God. The Taliban and al-Qaeda rely on sympathizers who consider them devoted Muslims fighting immoral Western occupiers. But intelligence picked up by Predator drones and other battlefield cameras challenges that idea—sometimes rather graphically."
• "One video, captured recently by the thermal-imagery technology housed in a sniper rifle, shows two Talibs in southern Afghanistan engaged in intimate relations with a donkey. Similar videos abound, including ground-surveillance footage that records a Talib fighter gratifying himself with a cow."
• "Tawdry though this predilection for porn may be, it is not necessarily trivial. There is, after all, potential propaganda value in this kind of jihadist behavior. Current US public diplomacy centers on selling America to the Muslim world, but we should also work to undermine some of the myths built up around our enemies by highlighting their incompetence, their moral failings, and their embarrassing antics. Beyond changing how the Muslim world perceives terrorists, we can help ourselves make smarter counterterrorism choices by being more realistic about the profile and aptitude of would-be attackers."

It's great to see this view hitting the mainstream. Arguing that we should be tearing apart the terrorist enemy by mocking him, ridiculing him and pointing out his hypocrisies, has been a bit lonely. Or as Kim Jong-il says in  Team America, "so ronery and sadry arone."

(OK, someone has dared me to refer to the infamous infrared US military gun camera of an Iraqi local - civilian or insurgent is unclear - having inappropriate relations with a farm animal. Our military people have captured a lot of video of insurgents and terrorists engaging in such behavior. I won't embed the actual video on this site, though I did post a still on the top left. For the morbidly curious - and you know who you are - click here for a tasteless, crass, narrated version of the video. A less tasteless, more humorous version, set to music, is available here, to Bloodhound Gang's "The Bad Touch," popularly known by the song's catchy refrain, "Let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.")

Images, top to bottom: (1) innocent donkey being victimized by Iraqi targets, as seen through US military infrared gun camera; (2) Christmas underwear bomber Abdulmutallab, with his malfunctioning explosive underwear; (3) Taliban with mismatched shoes, being ridiculed on Pakistani military website; (4) Islamic radical who mistakenly sets himself afire after torching the American flag; (5) Kim Jong-il, as seen in Team America; (6) the Saudi butt bomber who failed to kill Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism chief but blew himself up with a pound of plastic explosives and a cell phone detonator jammed up his bottom.

Bollywood pokes fun at Bin Laden - and us

Hollywood still doesn't dare make a mainstream film to mock Islamist terrorists, though as we've seen the British have recently come out with two: The Infidel and Four Lions.

Now from India comes Tere Bin Laden, about a young Pakistani TV journalist who wants to move to the USA to live the American dream. But he's foiled because homeland security won't allow him to get a visa. So he stumbles across a Bin Laden lookalike and makes a fake terrorist video . . . wait, the joke's on us. . . .

Starring Pakistani artist Ali Zafar, who we saw on this blog a few years ago as one of the performers in the Urdu pop video against Islamist extremism, Yeh Hum Naheen (This Is Not Us).

(Thanks to Mr Stone for the tip)

COMOPS Journal picks up on ridicule as counterterrorism weapon

COMOPS Journal has picked up on the theme of using ridicule as a weapon against our terrorist and extremist enemies. The idea has been slow to take root, but it is gradually doing so in certain parts of the US government.

Kristin Fleischer writes in her COMOPS Journal article, titled "Ridicule as Strategic Communication":

"Although the suggestion that ridicule and satire are legitimate tools of strategic communication might receive some – dare I say it – ridicule, Waller’s argument is a good one. Ridicule and satire have a long history in warfare, and they have been deployed both offensively and defensively. In the U.S., ridicule was used in the Revolutionary War, both to mock the British troops and to raise the morale of the American fighters. In WWII, domestic use of ridicule targeted Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito."

Fleischer quotes from my 2007 monograph, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War and from this PoliticalWarfare.org blog, and also highlights the creative work of blogger Jarret Brachman who coined the term "jihobbyists" as a way of ridiculing armchair terrorists who do naughty things online.

COMOPS Journal is an online publication of the Consortium for Strategic Communication, an initiative of the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University.

Preview of farcical look at home-grown jihadists

Here's a first look at the upcoming British film that makes fun of home-grown jihadist terrorists. The Four Lions, which I wrote about last month, premiered a few weeks ago at the Sundance Film Festival. Writer-director Chris Morris brilliantly researched Islamist extremism and discovered a lot to laugh at. He's bringing it to us in his comedy. Take a look at the dark, quiet humor in this short clip.

Early reviewers call The Four Lions:

• "an outrageous farce about a quartet of numbskull Islamic terrorists in the north of England,"
• "both laugh-out-loud funny and as serious as a bullet through your artery," and
• "daring and potentially offensive . . . it seems certain to be labeled anti-Islamic and irresponsible."

Only terrorist fronts like CAIR and Muslim Brotherhood fronts like ISNA would call it anti-Islamic, as the movie parodies extremism, and not Islam. But then, to CAIR and ISNA, both are one and the same.

I can't wait to see it!

The Taliban's Abu Ghraib

WARNING - GRAPHIC, DISTURBING VIDEO

There's no better way to take down an ultra-pious enemy than to prove that its leaders and members are depraved sociopaths. Here is one of the greatest vulnerabilities of the Islamist extremists who preach rigid morality but often act quite differently. Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan are exploiting that vulnerability to help the Taliban tear itself apart.

The target: The notorious Haqqani Network, based in northern Waziristan, Pakistan, and active in eastern Afghanistan.

The US has yet to exploit its full capabilities in this area, with terrabytes of damning captured videos under lock and key.

Fortunately, conservative clergy in Afghanistan and Pakistan have not been so reticent. Key Taliban leaders - Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son, Siraj Haqqani - had their own personal pornography ring. The Haqqani Network offered free "medical care" to rural Afghan women and girls, and then Haqqani's people raped them on video. Other Taliban figures, including a physician, were involved.

Once discovered, the Haqqanis tried to cover up their crimes. They had all the women and girls murdered, as well as their physician. However, they couldn't destroy all the video evidence, which enemies recovered. A Pakistani mullah produced a DVD, currently being distributed in Afghan and Pakistani bazaars, to discredit the Haqqanis. Click here for a downloadable link to the video. Even though the worst scenes have been blacked out for modesty reasons, the videos are graphic and disturbing. All the women and girls pictured in the video are now dead. An English translation of the transcript is available here.

The video is of low production quality by Western standards, but is entirely appropriate for local standards. Making media products to discredit the enemy in rural South Asia is not an expensive undertaking.

Here's the payoff from a political warfare point of view: Under local interpretations of Islamic law, the Haqqanis and all others involved must be killed as punishment, with worse torments to follow in the afterlife.

The mullah called for a jihad against the "House of Haqqani" - the leadership of the Haqqani clan.

This is exactly the type of product the US and its allies should be producing as part of their information operations and psychological operations in the AfPak theater and around the world. The Taliban is mainly Pashtun, and many rural Pashtuns have peculiar depravities that, if more widely known, could turn many devout Muslims against the movement and compel conservative mullahs to issue edicts ordering the imposition of traditional Islamic punishments.

A properly run psychological warfare campaign along these lines would also stigmatize Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda due to their decade-old "adoption" by the Taliban - with the terrorists' new fascination with butt bombs as a case in point. The campaign should be designed to morally compel some of those sheltering the terrorists to betray them or hand them over to the mullahs for old-fashioned sharia justice.