Counterfactual Friday -- How Hitler Could Have Won

Keep the enemy penned in and ruthlessly finish them off before they make sanctuary to fight another day. Avoid vast, unrealistic aims that get you inextricably enmeshed...whoops, there we go again -- ranting like imbeciles about checkables, and this shamelessly off of somebody's splendidly studied counterfactual history  .

From this coming Sunday's NYT Book Review:

How did the Wehrmacht, the best fighting force, lose World War II?

(...)

The title of the book, “The Storm of War,” conceals an answer to Roberts’s central question about the reasons for the German defeat. The notion of war as a storm summons up the Nazi idea of a blitzkrieg, a lightning victory that would somehow resolve all of the political and economic problems of the German state.

(...)

Roberts, the author of several books of English history, maintains the tension in his narrative by suggesting that if the war had been a purely military rather than a political contest, fought without errors on the German side, then the Germans might have won. If one considers the categories of martial endeavor from bottom to top, from the bunker to Berlin, one can see what he means. The Germans enjoyed advantages in weaponry, engagement, tactics and sometimes strategy. But at the moments when strategy was linked to politics, the German advantage was lost. Hitler’s war aims were vast, unrealistic and inextricably enmeshed in an ideology that celebrated destruction, above all of Jews and other racial enemies, but also of Germans when they failed to win. The quick successes in Poland in 1939 and France in 1940 convinced many of the generals that Hitler was indeed a genius.

(...)

Throughout the book, Roberts notes errors that, if avoided, might have helped the Germans to win battles and perhaps even the war itself. Hitler, he says, should have begun the war three years later than he did, in 1942 rather than 1939. He should not have allowed the British to escape at Dunkirk as France fell.

Hess This, Hess That

My [self-redacted] referral for security violation was from DIA Col [self re-dacted] (once commander of Spandau prison, knew Hess), dead now - would have been interested in this.

Hess's flight to Britain almost exactly 70 years ago has remained one of the great mysteries of World War II to this day. What compelled the Führer's right-hand man to risk his life on a spring day when 500 German bombers were carrying out their heaviest attack yet on London? Why did he offer peace to Great Britain at a time when it was the Wehrmacht's last fighting enemy and Hitler was preparing to attack the Soviet Union?

Until now, historians had assumed that Hitler's deputy was acting on his own. "Hess acted without Hitler's knowledge, but in the deep (if confused) belief that he was carrying out his wishes," British author Ian Kershaw wrote in his 2008 book, "Hitler: A Biography". But now a previously unpublished document is casting Hess's notorious one-way trip in a new light: A 28-page, handwritten report that historian Matthias Uhl of the German Historical Institute Moscow discovered in the State Archive of the Russian Federation.

Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers

It's a highly existential thing going on here (unlike many an other matter) -- maybe that's why we so enjoyed the book. From a review by Foreign Affairs. (Today's easter egg is a nod to V -- The Falcon)

This is the story, initially set in the nineteenth century, of seven chocolate makers -- three English, one Dutch, two Swiss, and one American -- struggling to produce salable products.

Eventually, determined entrepreneurs met the technical challenges of converting a bitter bean into the many delicious forms of chocolate familiar today. The three English firms -- Fry, Cadbury, and Rowntree -- were run by Quaker families, and the founder of the American one, Milton Hershey, had gone to a Quaker school. All the companies were imbued with a strong sense of social responsibility, founding orphanages, creating model towns, and engaging in other good works as they prospered.

The Main Strategic PSYOP As Practiced By US In UK

The conservative-leaning British paper The Telegraph has published 400 of the cables relating to the UK on their website . There are some goodies. I see no harm (to us) in republishing content from cables found on Telegraph website.

Have made it through all 400 of the cables posted by The Telegraph on Feb. 4. 

We will spotlight a few of the good ones over the next few posts. We must assure any watchers that these cables are posted in full on the Telegraph's website, so the OPSEC bogeyman doesn't apply to us. Content's certainly  public domain at this point (despite claims to the contrary from know-nothings).

That said - as hard as it is for some to believe (and watchtards believe much BS) - no OPSEC was harmed in the making of this and subsequent posts.


The main strat PSYOP as practiced by US in UK. (Since GB has plenty of experience along these lines - and is active worldwide in the post 9/11 strat PSYOP - the fact that we are doing some lifting in UK proper is probably due to money issues, given traditional British sensitivities to their turf in matters of this nature.)

Shuttle PSYOP

Those cousins keep delivering. Particularly interesting is their application of the dominant Strategic PSYOP on the home pitch. Leave it to the Brits (and Krauts for that matter) to (dare) think/work outside the box. Matrix-muddying dissonance out - Shuttle-PSYOP up!

Jacked & Hacked BBC (London) 2 April 2010 (H/T R. Sense)

Their faces etched from years of conflict in the war-torn deserts of Helmand Province, four senior Islamic scholars step into a pod on the London Eye.

As the giant wheel turns they stare in silence at the city spread beneath them; the River Thames, the Houses of Parliament and miles beyond.

It is their first time ever in Britain. As they soak up the sights, they know this visit is about much more than tourism.

It marks a new initiative in British government strategy; the recognition that military progress in southern Afghanistan will not hold unless international forces also win the battle for hearts and minds.

In the intense propaganda war on the ground, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office now hopes to improve communication with ordinary Afghans by targeting their religious leaders.

Jacked & Hacked BBC (London) 10 March 2010

There was a man from the other side of the world telling an audience that included Parliamentarians and other government officials what they had been wanting to hear. A clear, concise and quotable denouncement of al-Qaeda's worldview.

Canada-based Dr Qadri spoke for more than an hour on his reasons why the Koran forbids the murder and mayhem of suicide bombings.

"This fatwa is an absolute condemnation of terrorism. Without any excuse, without any pretext, without any exceptions, without creating any ways of justification," he said.

"This condemnation is in its totality, in its comprehensiveness, its absoluteness, a total condemnation of every act of terrorism in every form which is being committed or has been committed wrongly in the name of Islam."

[...]

Dr Qadri is a classically-trained Islamic scholar and his organisation, Minhaj ul-Quran International, has spent 30 years building a strong following in Pakistan.

On Facebook, a Spy Revealed (Pale Legs, Too)

-always hele, forever conceal and never reveal ...

--unknown

-hide in a field, not in a cave

--BoM 54:66

-Don't wait to be hunted to hide, that's always been my motto. --Samuel Beckett

Anyway, you might have a chuckle at this:

LONDON — The man in the Facebook photographs seems like your average guy having a little fun. Here he is in a festive scene at a park, gamely wearing a red fleece and a Santa Claus hat. Here he is again, playing Frisbee on the beach, clad in a pair of snug bathing trunks that show off his muscular, if pale (he is British) legs.

Oops. It turns out that this is not a regular person at all. He is in fact Sir John Sawers, diplomat and spy, currently the British ambassador to the United Nations and soon to be the chief of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service. It is as if, suddenly, the Internet were awash with pictures of the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, cavorting half-naked on vacation.

(...)

[T]he disclosure, such as it was, raised a little flurry of excitement in diplomatic and journalistic circles. On one hand, The Mail on Sunday fulminated that the existence of the now-defunct items represented a shocking breach of security that exposed the failings of the state apparatus, possibly compromised the safety of Sir John and Lady Sawers and was “potentially useful to terrorists.”

On the other, “It is not a state secret that he wears Speedo swimming trunks,” Foreign Secretary David Miliband declared snippily in a television interview. “The fact that there’s a picture that the head of MI6 goes swimming — wow, that really is exciting.”

(...)

It was not so long ago that MI6, the agency that in fiction employs James Bond, was so shrouded in secrecy that the government barely admitted that it existed, let alone condescended to reveal the identity of its chief (forget photographs). That never seemed to stop counterspies from, say, the KGB from knowing a great deal about the secret services, as various episodes over the decades proved.

-Jacked & Hacked NYT

Love Me

Under a most quaint plan being considered by the British Government, Afghans would be given handsets and access to the internet to help them gain their own voice.

It follows a growing realization in Washington and Whitehall that the allies are being outflanked by the Taliban in the battle to reach ordinary Afghans.

Sharing video clips is popular in Afghanistan where there are an estimated 6 million mobiles and around half a million internet users.

However, most of the footage is anti-Western propaganda created by the Taliban. It often includes footage of civilians apparently killed in US raids and is widely circulated in the country by phone and internet.

The allies' reputation was particularly damaged by film [YouTube-CNN] of around 90 civilians - many of them children - killed in a US-led bombing raid in August.

The British government's proposal would involve non-governmental organizations distributing mobile phones to Afghans to encourage them to make video diaries.

Devised by an outside consultant, the plan is said by the Foreign Office to "have merit". The BBC reported that the plan, part of a British Government-commissioned report by an outside consultant, would be used to record up to 100 video diaries for a film festival next year.

A spokesman for the UKs Department for International Development (DfID) said: "An external consultant has proposed a scheme but absolutely no decision has been made and it would be wrong to suggest that DfID will fund it."

Whitehall officials (Whitehall officials sounds so logarithmically better than Whitehall Turkeys) have said the aim is to deprive the Taliban of its virtual monopoly on propaganda using new media.

The once media-shy Taliban have gone hi-tech with DVDs, mobile phone messages, ring-tones, emails and a website to publicize their exploits and lambast their Afghan and Western enemies, a think-tank said on Thursday.

The Taliban hanged televisions and music tapes from trees in an effort to stamp out corrupting Western influences during their hardline Islamist rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Their leaders had only one computer, Afghanistan experts say.

But after U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the austere movement following the September 11, 2001, attacks, the militants regrouped and relaunched their insurgency in 2005, copying the tactics of roadside and suicide bombs from Iraq.

Now the Taliban have also created a "sophisticated communications apparatus" using the full range of media allowing them to project an "increasingly confident movement", the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in last summer's report Taliban Propaganda: Winning the War of Words?[47-page pdf].

With their own website, magazines, DVDs, audio cassettes, pamphlets and mobile phones, the ICG says, the Taliban are able to capitalize on mistakes made by the government and its allies and reveal their own "inflated tales of battlefield exploits".

Taliban statements emailed to the media talk of killing "puppet terrorists", meaning Afghan security forces, and destroying "occupation tanks" and seizing their arms.

So-called night-letters are delivered to homes warning Afghans against cooperating with the government and international troops, while DVDs, text and video messages are aimed at the more tech savvy.

The ICG said the Afghan government and its allies must try harder to combat weakening public support and alienation caused by arbitrary detentions and civilian casualties which the Taliban are able to exploit through their media.

"Whatever the military benefits of arbitrary detentions, they are far outweighed by the alienation they cause," the ICG said.

A series of air strikes by international forces in Afghanistan in the last month, Afghan officials say, have killed more than 60 civilians.

"The effectiveness of aerial bombardment, even if strictly exercised within the bounds of international law, must be considered against the damage to popular support," the ICG said.

The Taliban, it said, are not going to be defeated militarily and are resistant to outside criticism.

"Rather the legitimacy of its ideas and actions must be challenged more forcefully by the Afghan government and citizens," the ICG said.

Militants should be held to public account for killing civilians and targeting community leaders through open trials, and the Afghan government and its international allies should similarly be bound by the rule of law, the ICG said.

Ultimately, winning popular support is not about telling local communities that they are better off today. It is about proving it.

If Afghan civilians continue to perceive civilian deaths as being directly attributable to our presence & activities within their country and tribal regions then those - per proposed plan - distributed handsets could come back to bite us with a fresh swarm of pesky video snippets. It all sounds rather risky, if not downright desperate, given the present state of affairs in injun country. We assume there is buried within the report a suggestion to track the freebie phones - though such easily unveiled intention in itself could very well be grounds for seeing our phones, and the subcontracty plan, smashed to bits.

CATCH-All Shadows

Cross-border communications intercepts are all the rage these days, both in terms of the publicity and public debate generated - and by measure of the flurry of international legislative activities in motion to retroactively cloak in legalese the amassing activities that have already been well in place for considerable time among our duteous SIGINT allies - and that as integral piecemeal part of that ol´ jig-saw puzzle we've oft & melodramatically referred to as our Catch-All program.

Of perhaps fleeting interest to some of our readers comes a feebly related judgment handed down by the European Court of Human Rights earlier this week in a case brought by Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties), the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and British Irish Rights Watch against the United Kingdom. The judgment found that UK surveillance laws had lacked the necessary clarity and accountability to prevent abuses of power when used to intercept cross-border communications.

According to the EHCR,

[it]does not consider that the domestic law at the relevant time indicated with sufficient clarity, so as to provide adequate protection against abuse of power, the scope or manner of exercise of the very wide discretion conferred on the State to intercept and examine external communications. In particular, it did not, as required by the Court’s case-law, set out in a form accessible to the public any indication of the procedure to be followed for selecting for examination, sharing, storing and destroying intercepted material. The interference with the applicants’ rights under Article 8 (the right to privacy) was not, therefore, “in accordance with the law.”

A puniest of victories for privacy advocates - a pebbly bump in the road for CATCH-ALL.

Moonlight Sonata - Entertaining Notions of LIHOP

On the night of November 14, 1940, German bombers dropped 500 tons of explosives, 33,000 incendiary bombs and dozens of parachute mines on Coventry. A new play at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, One Night In November, claims that Winston Churchill knew of the attack several days in advance but held back the information [Let It Happen On Purpose - LIHOP ] to protect the most important secret of the war: the breaking of the German Enigma code at Bletchley Park. Churchill's biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert, reveals his truth about the events of that day:

On November 12, 1940, Enigma decrypts made it clear that a major German bombing raid was imminent. Its code name, Moonlight Sonata, had been read in the decrypts. The Air Intelligence report Churchill received on November 12 gave, on the basis of the latest intelligence, the following possible targets: central London, Greater London, the Thames Valley, Kent or the Essex Coast. A German pilot who had been shot down on November 9 had, under interrogation, suggested that Coventry and Birmingham would both be attacked in a “colossal raid” between November 15 and 20; but the senior Air Intelligence Liaison officer at Bletchley noted that there was “pretty definite information that the attack is to be against London and the Home Counties”.

Bletchley considered the German pilot's information “doubtful”. Churchill was sent a summary of these reports on the morning of November 14; he read them just after midday. Whatever the target, he was told, the usual counter-measures had been prepared since early that morning, and would be activated as soon as the precise target was known. The target area would be “probably in the vicinity of London”, Churchill read. If, however, “further information were to indicate Coventry, Birmingham or elsewhere”, it was hoped that the standard “Cold Water” instructions for counter-measures could be got out in time.

That afternoon, Churchill prepared to leave Downing Street by car to spend the weekend at Ditchley Park, one of his weekend retreats. As his car prepared to leave, John Martin, his Principal Private Secretary, handed him a top-secret message in a locked box. As the car reached the Albert Memorial, Churchill read the message. It was the latest intelligence: a heavy raid on London. He immediately told his driver to return to Downing Street, explaining to Martin that he was not going to spend the night peacefully in the country while the capital was “under heavy attack”. Early that evening Churchill waited at Downing Street for the expected attack on London, sending his two duty private secretaries, John Colville and John Peck, to the underground shelter at the disused Down Street station on the Piccadilly Line, telling them: “You are too young to die.” He also gave instructions for the “Garden Room Girls” - the typists - to be sent home. Churchill went on to the Air Ministry roof to await the bombing.

The moment German radio beams identified Coventry as the target, the Air Ministry ordered British planes to bomb the aerodromes from which the attackers were expected to take off. A continuous fighter patrol had been maintained over Coventry itself, and the “Cold Water” defence preparations were activated. As a result of an earlier raid on Coventry, Churchill had given instructions on November 7 to strengthen Coventry's anti-aircraft defences. These instructions had been carried out.

On November 12, Enigma had revealed a raid in prospect, but not the target. At the last moment on November 14, the beams revealed the target, and were acted on without delay.

STAREX - Exploitation of the Occult

While the following story has received considerable attention in the broadsheets of her former colonies, few accounts found worthy of mention a particular tidbit of black public diplomacy involving the cigar flourishing man our cousin's counter-intelligence and security agency once had in their employ as court astrologer.

A silk gown dressing Jewish refugee from Hungary, deployed by MI5 to second guess a Hitler believed to be swayed by the stars (recent research portrays a Hitler unimpressed by the Mumbo Jumbo of astrology - in fact one of his old secretaries recently revealed that he apparently had good laughs entertaining the notion that the Allies might believe he harbored the occult inclinations of our own Reagans ), was sent to neutral America to persuade the general populace and the President of the good fortunes lying in wait should the country go kinetic and weigh in with boots and metal against Hitler's pesky Reich.

Below is an unholy amalgam of jacked & hacked excerpts from a pirate's clutch of online sources:

Desperate for a glimpse into Adolf Hitler's unpredictable mind, British spies hired an astrologer during World War II to match the forecasts of the Nazi leader's personal astrologers, documents declassified Tuesday show.

[ Not entirely correct - actually William Stevenson's 1976 book A Man Called Intrepid somewhat describes the astrologer's work in the USA on behalf of British Security Co-ordination. Enough of that -M1 ]

They soon regretted it.

The file released to Britain's National Archives catalogs the frustrations of MI5 handlers as they try to prevent the astrologer, Louis de Wohl, from publicly embarrassing high-ranking intelligence and military officers over whom he briefly held sway.

De Wohl was born in Berlin in 1903, where he worked as a bank clerk, a novelist and a screenwriter before fleeing to Britain in 1935 to avoid Nazi persecution for being part Jewish. His wife, Alexandra, fled to Santiago, Chile, where she claimed to be a Romanian princess and was known as La Baronessa. Their relationship was closer to mother and son than man and wife, his file said.

In London, he claimed variously to be a Hungarian nobleman, the nephew of an Austrian conductor, the grandson of a British banking magnate and a relative of the Lord Mayor of London. His books told of traveling the Far East in Arab disguise and hanging out in Berlin cafes in women's clothing.

De Wohl laid out his astrological credentials in a 1937 autobiography, I Follow My Stars. A year later in Secret Service of the Sky, he argued stars were like spies that could obtain secret information.

His break came, he wrote in a later book, during a dinner at the Spanish Embassy in London, when a Spanish duchess asked de Wohl to reveal Hitler's horoscope to Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax.

Sir Charles Hambro, the head of Britain's Special Operations Executive, soon hired him as part of his network of agents across Europe.

The government rented an apartment for de Wohl in a hotel in London's exclusive Park Lane. On paper headed Psychological Research Bureau, he
reported on clients and wrote horoscopes for Allied and Nazi leaders.

But de Wohl's predictions were often so vague it is impossible to see any military use. Take his December 1942 prediction for seven months later: "The German astrologers must pray that enemy action does not force the Fuehrer into making important decisions within the first eight days of the month (of July), as this would lead to great disaster."

Agents complained de Wohl's flamboyantly gay demeanor was destroying their carefully constructed cover story that his hotel apartment was paid for by a wealthy female patron and that his special operations liaison officer was a mistress. Agents also complained of his boasting about connections to the War Office and Naval Command.

What everyone in Britain wanted most was to get the Americans to enter the war. Prime Minister Winston Churchill didn't believe in astrology, but in mid-1941 he sent de Wohl to the U.S. to persuade Americans that the Nazis would lose within months if they entered the war.

de Wohl went round radio stations and newspapers casting Hitler's horoscope and predicting things were all going to go very badly and that the Nazis would lose within months if they entered the war.

A U.S. convention of pro-German astrologers had predicted Hitler would win the war, giving the U.S. more reason to stay out. Billing himself as The Modern Nostradamus, de Wohl proclaimed the same stars showed the opposite.

Ultimately it was Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, that brought the U.S. into the war - not de Wohl's assurances that U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's horoscope was stunning.

His services no longer needed, he was called back to London in February 1942. He told an MI5 officer that he was astonished when he returned to find his hotel apartment stripped bare and his department disbanded.

His handlers did not contact him. He knocked on doors looking for Hambro - wearing the uniform of a British Army captain. The rank was assigned to him temporarily for his U.S. mission and withdrawn afterward. But to MI5's dismay, that wasn't explained to de Wohl.

Behind the scenes, MI5 correspondence shows his handlers at a loss. Senior officers offer a number of proposals on how to dispose of de Wohl, including interning him in a camp or moving him to a remote corner of the country. Two other options are blanked out in the file.

Deciding that de Wohl was potentially dangerous because he could damage the reputation of his clientele and the War Office, MI5 decided to keep him happy and continue to employ him.

The war ground on and the Allies won without consulting the stars.

But as it drew to an end, de Wohl wrote one last autobiographical book, The Stars of War and Peace, in which he revealed he was Britain's state seer and had fought Hitler from his luxury hotel using star warfare.

Law Enforcement, National Security and Climate Change

Might we all pretend that Monday Coming referred to today? Thanks!

The world's wealthiest countries could face the beginnings of societal breakdown by mid-century in the form of boiling domestic unrest over climate change according to the security think tank Oxford Research Group's new report An Uncertain Future: Law Enforcement, National Security and Climate Change [20-page pdf].

A tide of protest against polluting companies and perceived government inaction and, in extreme cases, the emergence of new forms of ecoterrorism are among scenarios outlined by the Oxford Research Group.

The report sounds a warning quite different from the conventional assumption that carbon-induced global warming could trigger waves of environmental refugees from abroad driven by the quest for food, water and shelter.

Most analysis of global warming focuses on the potential for security threats from `over there' in the form of mass migration. That may well be the case but the report's research indicates that there is a range of potential threats from civil unrest within the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States – all the Western nations, in fact - and these threats are seen as growing more acute over time, if governments continually fail to protect us from climate change.

The Oxford report calls on Western governments to overhaul their approach to security and disaster planning, with an emphasis on helping police, security and military forces adapt to preventative, rather than reactive, strategies. A conventional strategy of using force to deter unrest, the report says, is doomed to failure.

The report says that, because Europe and North America have a far greater capacity to adapt to rapid climate change, neither continent is likely to engage in climate-related regional conflict predicted in the most resource-depleted parts of the developing world.

What is "almost certain," the report said, is that by 2050 droughts, food scarcity and flooding would trigger the movement of as many as 200 million environmental refugees. The vast majority is likely to flow toward the developed world, said Abbott. But internal migration is also a factor that is likely to come with its own security issues.

Acknowledging that climate change and security is "a young area of analysis," the Oxford report said its predictions are likely to change, for better or for worse, over the coming decades.

Climate change - what an asexy and trés boring topic with which to kick off the new year here. Oh well...

[The report] is based in part on a briefing given by the author to the Australian Federal Police and other law enforcement and defence agencies in Canberra at the end of 2007. It builds on some of the analysis initially laid out in Global Responses to Global Threats (June 2006) and Beyond Terror (April 2007), and is published as part of ORG's Sustainable security project.

Ho Ho Ho IO - Maritime Meatballs

Awareness of IO in the shape of deception-/influence-ops (and other PSYOP-ishness) might reasonably be perceived as a rather pertinent knowledge-set for that discerning consumer of news still wary of those special narratives that intermittently pop up and come to ubiquitously permeate the exhaust fumes of every lo-hairlined tele-prompted head intensely willing to console one come dinner time with sponsored clarity on why the world will always turn for yet another day of credit fueled eudaimonia.

Providing an example of a recent IO and how it's resultant narrative was successfully deployed against a targeted public, and leveraged against its leadership, would perhaps not be considered completely out of order given the esoteric contextualizing going on at this site of dubious repute. For some of our regulars, what follows will be but foggy old news. Verily, it is for these bored and lonely degenerates we provide a meager feed of complimentary skankwork.

In varying contrast to the generic authoritarian state, Western democracies are not seldom at somewhat of an initial loss when attempting to adequately control the mass media to shape the perceptions of their citizens when delicate need so demands. In such lieu, the creation of ‘false realities’ has proven to be one of several workable alternatives to the more direct avenues of influence readily available to those most fortunate despots of Myanmar et al.

By manipulating/tailoring events to be appetizing to a rather divinable media, political/soft control of targeted nations becomes, albeit only at fortunate times, a not altogether unachievable goal. To such ends, well-heeled powers will on occasion aim to create indicators – enemy subs or bomb attacks or whatever – though most often dazzling or salacious events to be sure, that are odds-on seized upon by the regularized and unflappable diligentsia of Dorito media for Cheezy-dimensional interpretation and dissemination to the publics targeted for perception shaping - be they of foreign or domestic persuasion.

After World War II, a real hot war in Western Europe appeared increasingly unlikely. Power struggles in democratic countries found new forms at the lower end of the conflict spectrum. In defense of the Western system, the US began to operate submarines to simulate real enemy intrusions into the waters of allies and friends as an instrument to test their readiness and capability - but also to manipulate the mindset of local military forces, governments and populations, as was the case in Sweden.

Following the stranding of a Soviet Whiskey-class submarine in 1981 in a Swedish archipelago, a series of massive submarine intrusions took place within Swedish waters and were widely attributed to Soviet intrusions. Soon the kingdom of Sweden was on high alert for Spetznaz frogmen everywhere (Robert Boyd got it wrong here, save perhaps for his 'probably'). However, the evidence for these Soviet intrusions appears to have been manipulated or simply invented. Classified documents and interviews point to covert Western, rather than Soviet, activity.

Archival material and interviews with retired military officers point to US and to some extent UK PSYOPs. Former US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger stated on Swedish TV that US/Western submarines operated regularly and frequently in Swedish waters after Swedish-US navy-to-navy consultations. However, the Swedish government or public was never informed. They believed the submarines were from the Soviet Union. These operations allowed the U.S. to shape the mindset of their targeted audience in order to control a state perceived to be wavering on its kinetic commitments.

As the United States and Britain ran a 'secret war' in Swedish waters, the number of Swedes perceiving the Soviet Union as a direct threat increased from 5-10 per cent in 1980 to 45 per cent in 1983. This Anglo-American 'secret war' aimed at exerting political influence over Sweden was a risky enterprise but perhaps one of the most successful covert operations of the entire Cold War.

Viciously hacked & jacked book review of Ola Tunander's The Secret War Against Sweden: US and British Submarine Deception in the 1980's

Whoops-a-Daisy

In a post from last week at Haft of the Spear, CTA's M. Tanji wrote:

So, contrary to Don Kerr’s assessment, no one has to surrender their privacy in order for the government to help ensure their safety. And even if no ready solution were at hand, he should think twice before repeating “the government can be trusted with personal information” line, because the list of government-agency-linked data loss events (DHS, IRS, VA, etc., etc,) is a real inconvenient truth.

Now this just in from the UK via BBC:

Two computer discs holding the personal details of all families in the UK with a child under 16 have gone missing. The Child Benefit data on them includes name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number and, where relevant, bank details of 25 million people.

IO The Children Unto Me

...and I thought the West had retired subtleties like this to some Stalinoid or Goebellsonian past or final outpost of Pyonyangian persistence. Apparently not.

History is written by the winners -- but who writes the English lessons? A teaching pack about the Iraq war for British schools commissioned by the Ministry of Defence is stirring up controversy. It comes from a company called Defence Dynamics, and is being promoted by marketing agency Kids Connections.

As reported in New Statesman magazine, the lesson plan titled ‘Promoting peace and security in Iraq’ is intended for English teachers and gives an upbeat view of the war and the occupation.

A student fact sheet states that the occupation has resulted in “Over 150 healthcare facilities completed and many more are in progress. 20 hospitals rehabilitated. Immunisation programme re-started in 2003. 70 million new text books distributed to schools. Sewage and wastewater treatment plants operating again.”

Yet this rosy picture seems woefully at odds with a report by the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq, backed by Oxfam, which states that Iraq is facing a humanitarian crisis "of alarming scale and severity". It finds that four million Iraqis are ‘food-insecure’ and that four million have fled, creating "the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world".

The pack also anticipates some resistance (often a good move) and suggests countermeasures:

It instructs classes to hold a vote on the war, and to produce a piece writing arguing for or against the withdrawal of soldiers from the Gulf.

The teachers’ notes state: "Most students will vote against the ongoing maintenance of troops. Ask students to justify their opinions."

It continues: "Throughout the lesson, students should come to understand that this activity is representative of democracy on a micro scale and by voting, they have exercised their democratic right, a right that is newly available to Iraqis."

One teacher is not impressed:

“As a lesson plan it’s insanely complicated,” says Victoria Elliott, a secondary English teacher. “The focus is not really on the skills supposedly being taught, but is instead about getting information across, which is completely irrelevant to English teaching.”

And the Guardian newspaper reports there may be a legal challenge:

... if Nick Grant, National Union of Teachers branch secretary in Ealing, London, has his way, it faces a boycott by teachers and legal action by the NUT. Grant thinks the lesson plan breaks the 1996 Education Act, which bans "the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school".

-A jacked David Hambling von Danger Room

U.S./British Rift Growing on Afghanistan

On a day when the bedwetters are eagerly awaiting a new propaganda message from Osama Bin Laden, we are reminded once again why their beloved war of choice in Iraq was a bad idea.

Britain is risking a new foreign policy rift with the US after bluntly telling the Bush Administration that it is "winning the battles but losing the war" in Afghanistan.

Gordon Brown and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, fear that the US remains "fixated" by Iraq and is failing to address what they regard as the real front line in the war on terrorism.

Disagreement has surfaced already over the US military's desire to spray opium poppy fields from the air with herbicide, as well as to continue its bombing strikes on Afghan villages, which Britain complains undermines its strategy of "winning hearts and minds."

Other areas of contention include what Britain regards as Washington's indulgent attitude towards Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, who is accused of tolerating, even conniving with, widespread corruption inside his government.

One source said: "The Americans see a bit of military success in Afghanistan and think it's all fine. They are blinkered by Iraq and this is becoming symptomatic of a lack of serious engagement on policy across the piste."

Mr Miliband has instigated a strategy overhaul on Afghanistan which, although not a formal "review", is causing alarm within a US Administration still smarting over Britain’s withdrawal of troops from Basra in southern Iraq this week. ...

Mr Miliband has pushed Afghanistan up the policy agenda, choosing Kabul as the destination for his first trip abroad as Foreign Secretary in July. He wants to "step up the game" by building the strength of the Kabul Government and security forces, luring a broader range of Afghans into the administration, as well as tackling longstanding corruption surrounding the narcotics trade.

Some of the issues were aired this week by a team of Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence officials in Washington to discuss next year’s Nato summit, which is likely to be dominated by the mission in Afghanistan.

The Day India Burned – Partition

Of all the episodes in Britain’s Imperial past, its ham-fisted partition and subsequent abandonment of India is one of the most outrageous.

As seen below in the 90- minute documentary The Day India Burned – Partition, Britain behaved with a stunning disregard for India’s national well- being, as it drew up a partition between India and Pakistan almost on a whim, and then got out sharpish as chaos flared in its wake.

By the time of the partition in August 1947, India had been the jewel in the empire’s crown for nearly 200 years. But after being bankrupted by the Second World War, it was clear that Britain could no longer afford to maintain its Indian army. The empire had well and truly crumbled, so it was up to dashing old Louis Mountbatten to trot over and sort out all this bally bother.

Following a series of negotiations between Mountbatten, Muslim leader Mohammed Ali Jinha, and Indian national congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru, it was eventually decided that India would be split up, and Pakistan born, in the summer of 1948. But the following day, Mountbatten suddenly announced that Britain would actually be leaving a year earlier than planned. Sorry about that, old fruit, but must dash, what?

Violent civil unrest was already on the increase by this point, notably during the three- day Calcutta riots of 1946, in which around 5,000 people were killed. As Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims all slaughtered one another (and, in some cases, their own), the British army hid in case they became outnumbered by the rioters. This allowed for horrific scenes of violence to go unmonitored.

The film gathers an impressive number of contemporary eyewitnesses to tell their sides of the tale, including Nehru’s niece, Mountbatten’s daughter, and Gandhi disciple Ashoka Gupta. By the end, the message had come across loud and clear: the partition was a dreadful disaster, Britain is a twit, humans are capable of truly monstrous deeds, and Richard Dawkins is right – religion can be one of the most destructive tools known to mankind.

Partition: The Day India Burned - BBC Documentary (all parts 10 minutes in length)
Pt1-Pt2-Pt3-Pt4-Pt5-Pt6-Pt7-Pt8-Pt9

Sharing a Common Playbook

The U.S. and Great Britain are each introducing new programs in line with the main GWOT Strategic PSYOP plan:

[There is] something new in Britain's mosques: an effort to teach basic citizenship issues in a special curriculum designed to reach students who might be vulnerable to Islamic extremism.

Over the long haul, the British government hopes that such civics classes, which use the Koran to answer questions about daily life, will replace the often tedious, and sometimes hard-core, religious lessons taught in many mosques across the land. Often, these lessons emphasize rote learning of the Koran and are taught by Pakistani-born imams who speak little English and have little contact with larger British society.

Written by a Bradford teacher, Sajid Hussain, 34, who holds a degree from Oxford University, the new curriculum is being taught in some religious classes in a city that is increasingly segregated between South Asians and whites.

The effort has the backing of the Labour government as part of a hearts-and-minds campaign to better integrate the country's mainstream Muslims into British culture. Approximately two million Muslims, mostly of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin, live in Britain.

Since four British Muslim suicide bombers attacked the London transit system in July 2005 and two other major terrorist plots supposedly planned by British Muslims were alleged last year, officials have been struggling with how to isolate extremists.

The new prime minister, Gordon Brown, said at his first news conference last month that he wanted to demonstrate the "importance we attach to nonviolence, the importance we attach to the dignity of each individual," and in the process make unpalatable the "extreme message of those who practice violence and would maim and murder citizens on British soil."

"The question for us," he said, "is how we can separate those extremists from the moderate mainstream majority."

One of the virtues of the curriculum in Bradford in applying Brown's vision, according to his aides, is that it is taught by forward-leaning imams and is based on matching messages from the Koran to everyday life in Britain. The Labour government has been particularly concerned because, in part through its involvement in the Iraq war, it lacks credibility with large swaths of British Muslims.

An estimated 100,000 school-age Muslim children attend religious classes held at mosques in Britain daily, generally after regular school hours, said Jane Houghton, a spokeswoman for the Department of Communities and Local Government. "The impact this teaching could have is quite considerable," she said.

And along the same basic lines (albeit being enacted exclusively abroad):

The State Department is launching what it says will be the first comprehensive public diplomacy effort targeting children, hoping to shape the views of Muslim youths ages 8 to 14 with a series of summer camps and enrichment programs designed to counter negative images of the United States.

The new initiative is the brainchild of Karen Hughes, a confidante of President Bush who has become the most powerful public-diplomacy czar in decades. Hughes has argued forcefully that the US government must reach out to children younger than age 14, a population the State Department has largely neglected because they are too young for traditional exchange programs.

"By the time kids get to high school, their impressions are already pretty well shaped," Hughes said in an interview Monday. She said she began to plan the initiative last year when she realized that the US government's programs for young people "weren't reaching down really young enough."

As a test of her idea, Hughes asked embassies in 14 Islamic countries this summer to come up with pilot programs for that age bracket, and spent nearly $1 million on projects that involved about 6,000 youths and hundreds of local partnering organizations. Participants included more than 2,000 girls in Turkey who attended a basketball camp and 80 children from rural schools in Malaysia who learned about Thomas Jefferson and other US heroes on an American-style camping trip with embassy staff and families.

But the programs also carry risks in nations with virulent anti-American sentiments, which are where most of the programs are aimed.

For example, 41 Iraqi students learned about baseball and the English language for three days this summer in Baghdad. A photo of the group meeting with US Ambassador Ryan Crocker hangs on the door of Hughes's office at the State Department -- but it cannot be publicly released for fear that the children may be harmed by terrorists because of their connection with the United States.

"There's always a risk, whatever you do, in a country where they really don't like you, particularly if you are talking to the kids," Patricia Kushlis, a retired State Department foreign service officer who now runs a public diplomacy blog called WhirledView. Nonetheless, some foreign policy specialists praised the notion of targeting public diplomacy efforts at average people, rather than elites and opinion-makers, and said children often develop their world view during ages 8 to 14.

"There is a generation, in the Middle East in particular, of 15 to 22 year olds, that during the most formative years of their lives has only seen the US as an imperialist nation," said Joshua Fouts, director of the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy, a Los Angeles-based think tank. "If kids aged 8 to 14 are all that's left, then it is important that we engage them." ...

The success of the new initiative will probably define the legacy of Hughes, whose initial efforts to reach out to average people in the Arab world were widely criticized as naive. In 2005, on her first trip as assistant secretary of state, she drew criticism for breaking cultural bounds by extolling the joys of having the freedom to drive a car to groups of women in countries where driving is limited to men.

Hughes modeled her program for children in the Muslim world on American summer camps and intended to use the term "Camp Friendship." But after critics said people abroad might associate "camp" with reeducation camps or even the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, the State Department switched to calling them "youth enrichment programs."

Hughes said she hopes to greatly expand this summer's pilot project with $8.5 million she received from Congress this year. State Department officials will plan the expansion of the project after seeing exit interviews with the children.

Operation Banner - British MoD Reminisce Northern Ireland COIN

Here's a recently unearthed document outlining the British military view of its own role, function, successes and failures from 1969 to 2006 in Northern Ireland. The document, Operation Banner - An Analysis of Military Operations in Northern Ireland ( pdf), offers insight into the thinking of senior military officers and civil servants at the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. The level of detail re operational matters proves that this wasn't intended to reach the hoi polloi.

In 2006, when the document was written, the CGS was General Mike Jackson who drew up the notorious 'shot list' in the hours after Bloody Sunday. The British Government has long sought to portray its role in Northern Ireland as that of the neutral broker, the referee between two warring factions. This document, which was not intended to be made public, makes no such pretense. According to the MoD there was only one war and one enemy - the IRA. Loyalist paramilitaries on the other hand were 'respectable'.


Excerpts

The military operations which started in Northern Ireland in 1969 will, without a doubt, be seen as one of the most important campaigns ever fought by the British Army and its fellow Services. That campaign is the longest to date; one of the very few waged on British soil; and one of the very few ever brought to a successful conclusion by the armed forces of a developed nation against an irregular force. This publication is a reflection on that campaign that seeks to capture its essence; it does not claim to be the definitive analysis.

The immediate tactical lessons of Operation BANNER have already been exported elsewhere, with considerable success. Operations in the Balkans, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq have already demonstrated both the particular techniques and the levels of expertise learnt through hard experience, both on the streets and in the fields of Northern Ireland. This publication does not seek to capture those lessons. Instead, it considers the high-level general issues that might be applicable to any future counter insurgency or counter terrorist campaign which the British armed forces might have to undertake.

THE EARLY STAGES

There was no insurgency in August 1969. The IRA was not a credible force and took no significant part in the events of that month. For several reasons the IRA was allowed to develop into an effective insurgent organisation over the next two years. This suggests that the early stages of an apparent breakdown in social order – however it is described - are absolutely critical to the subsequent nature of a campaign. All subsequent decisions and actions, by all parties, are conditioned by these early events. Furthermore violence in the early stages creates bitterness, hatred and extreme views which can last for generations. Looking at the events of the Troubles in retrospect, it is apparent that many of them could have been avoided or reduced in impact if effective measures had been taken early on; and that similar patterns can be seen in many situations elsewhere.

Thus there is an important requirement to identify situations which are likely to lead to social unrest, insurgency or civil war. In Northern Ireland, this should not have been difficult. Junior officers present in Northern Ireland in 1969 were well aware of the discrimination and deprivation, and asked themselves at the time why the Government did not do anything about it.

However, the critical issue is the necessity of engaging all relevant agencies in early, substantive, visible action for reform in order to prevent insurgency or civil war breaking out or potential insurgents exploiting the situation. This is likely to be difficult. Lack of knowledge of the situation, lack of perception, vested interests and political impasse will all militate against the chance of such preventive action being taken.

The initial period after the arrival of a military force in a peace support or peace enforcement operation has been described as the ‘honeymoon period’. That suggests that there is a period (variously given as 100 days or three months) in which to put things right. The term ‘honeymoon period’ is a misnomer. It is not a honeymoon. It is the most important phase of the campaign.

The underlying causes of an insurgency will tend to be social or political, economic, religious or a mixture of these. Insurgent bodies feed off disaffection (and vice versa) from whatever cause. In the case of Northern Ireland the IRA fed initially off discrimination and deprivation, and then exploited the perception that the Army and RUC were partisan and anti-catholic. The truth was not necessarily important: dissatisfaction is a sentiment, and feeds off perceptions.

Security forces do not ‘win’ insurgency campaigns militarily; at best they can contain or suppress the level of violence and achieve a successful end-state. They can thus
reduce a situation to an ‘acceptable level of violence’ – a level at which normal social, political and economic activities can take place without intimidation. ‘Acceptable level of violence’ as a term should be used carefully since violence should have no place in a developed society. What is required is a level which the population can live with, and with which local police forces can cope. Security forces should bring the level of violence down to the point at which dissidents believe they will not win through a primarily violent strategy and at which a political process can proceed without significant intimidation. If possible, the situation should not be allowed to come to that stage.

However, unless the causes of unrest are addressed, insurgency or serious unrest will continue. In Northern Ireland this did happen, over a period of years. The Northern Ireland Housing Executive did clear the great majority of the Victorian slums. Money was invested into the economy to create jobs. It took time, and it could not have been done without a substantial reduction in the levels of violence of the early 1970s. But, simplistically, the long-term solution was not to deploy three battalions into the Divis Flats; but rather to bulldoze them and build decent, respectable homes with proper amenities.

Addressing the causes of the insurgency will not generally be within the remit of the armed forces. They can achieve a limited but critical security task, but that will not be the solution to the overall problem. In addition, they should avoid making the situation worse. It could be argued that the Army did make the situation worse by, in practice, alienating the catholic community in 1970 and 1971. In this regard, it should be acknowledged that while material improvements can be delivered, in some cases it may be much more difficult to change emotions, perceptions or deep-seated grievances and beliefs.

A QUARTER CENTURY

By 1980 almost all the military structures which eventually defeated PIRA were in place. It is revealing to examine why it then took another quarter of a century to end the campaign.

In retrospect some signs are visible. There was no single authority in overall charge of the direction of the campaign, but rather three agencies, often poorly-coordinated: Stormont followed by the NIO; the MOD; and the RUC. From a military perspective, for most of the campaign there was little coherence and synergy. There was little evidence of a strategic vision and no long-term plan.

Below the level of Westminster White Papers there was no clearly-articulated strategy, or view of the future and how to achieve it which involved all the relevant
agencies. As a result the ‘wheel was often reinvented’ and progress was unnecessarily slow. Action against terrorists was not linked closely to addressing the causes of the problem.Ministers and civil servants were sometimes reluctant to engage in the comprehensive, fully coordinated cross-government activity which the Army would recognise as a campaign plan. That is a good reason for the need to take very firm action to ensure that they are engaged in, and convinced of the need to abide by, the process. This will not be easy.

INFORMATION OPERATIONS

For several reasons Information Operations were probably the most disappointing aspect of the campaign. In the early stages soldiers and junior officers, given appropriate training, did a very good job of appearing on camera in the immediate aftermath of an incident. The Army certainly learned hard lessons regarding media handling in the early 1970s. However, with that exception, Information Operations were generally poorly conducted; they were ill-coordinated with other government bodies; they were reactive; and often missed significant opportunities.

Particular efforts are likely to be needed to overcome the inherent lack of synergy between Government Departments and agencies. In Northern Ireland this was never more the case than in the area of Information Operations.

The absence of a government information line was often exploited by the terrorist, sometimes with operational or strategic consequences. Constant criticism in the republican media, notably the An Phoblacht newspaper, was not seriously challenged by Government, NIO or Army Information Operations. Part of the reason for the ineffectiveness lay in the lack of a single unitary authority for the campaign, and the lack of a joint forum to agree Information Operations priorities, messages and means of dissemination. Differing viewpoints on the need for positive Information Operations in Stormont (and the NIO) the Police and HQ Northern Ireland militated against effective Information Operations.

There was very little actionable intelligence before the introduction of Internment. The RUC SB was almost completely ineffective and the traditional source of HUMINT – the B Specials - had been disbanded. The UDR was originally not allowed any role in intelligence activities. Without actionable intelligence of any appreciable quality or quantity, the security forces' main offensive option was to search occupied houses, usually conducted on the basis of low-grade tip-offs. ...

Considerable emphasis was initially placed on screening, 'P' ('Personality') checks and pub checks. Detaining individuals for a few hours to allow screening was useful, since some individuals were quite happy to pass information in privacy if they had been detained. However, it was considered highly invasive of personal liberty. P checks were equally intrusive, and pub checks were often highly and unnecessarily confrontational. As the campaign progressed these methods were largely replaced by less intrusive methods, training in suspect recognition, and chat-ups. It took a little time to realise that the best 'chatter-up' was not necessarily the most senior member of a patrol. [lol]

Many contributions to this analysis have described the information campaign in terms such as ‘woeful’, ‘pitiable’ and ‘grossly inadequate’. In simple terms, rarely would anybody in authority other than in the Army take a positive, proactive stance. The result was a regular series of information failures in which PIRA (and occasionally loyalist paramilitaries) held and exploited their advantage. As early as the mid-1970s over 80% of the violence was perpetrated by PIRA, but even that simple and categorical fact was never exploited. Since insurgency feeds off dissatisfaction, and dissatisfaction is a sentiment which feeds off perceptions, shaping the perception of the population is critically important. The absence of a unified, proactive information strategy for most of the campaign was a major failing.

One distinguished commentator has suggested that, in peace support or counter insurgency operations, information is the currency, not firepower. The logic is simple: once an adversary has been identified to allow his removal (by arrest or attack) the security forces normally have more than sufficient physical resources with which to strike. The difficult part is the information required, particularly where the terrorist or insurgent hides himself in the midst of the population (and in a blizzard of irrelevant information).

The intelligence aspects of Operation BANNER were discussed earlier. Their importance is hard to understate. The insurgency could not have been broken, and the terrorist structure could not have been engaged and finally driven into politics without the intelligence organisations and processes that were developed.

It was often said that the British did not understand Ireland. In part this may have reflected ignorance and an unwillingness to try to understand. For the many commanders who did attempt to understand the roots of the Troubles any number of perceptive books were available. With hindsight what those books could not easily convey, nor the British easily understand, were the deep-seated beliefs, myths and feelings held by the local population. In some cases the perceived (and perhaps actual) grievances were centuries old.

Selectively taught history or partisan use of events provided rallying cries and strong motivators. Such cultural issues tend to be unspoken and even subconscious. They are inherently difficult to comprehend. In the absence of such deep understanding the British tended to underestimate the differences between the Irish and themselves. One commentator observed that Englishmen, especially, tend to view the Irishman as a variant of a Briton rather than as a foreigner.

Without effective cultural understanding the security forces in any theatre cannot conduct a truly effective information campaign and arguably, therefore, an effective counter insurgency campaign. Additionally many military activities may be flawed because the reaction of population cannot be properly predicted: there is a need both to gain intelligence and to understand local perceptions.7 This links to the idea that insurgency feeds off dissatisfaction, and dissatisfaction is a sentiment based on perception. Perception is framed by culture.

A coherent, effective high-level information operations campaign will be a prerequisite for success: information operations are crucial in a world with an insatiable desire for information and news, and where the internet ‘blogger’ can broadcast as powerful images and messages as the White House or Downing Street. The Army learned hard lessons about good media relations in the 1970s, but this is an area that needs as much attention as the capabilities of potential opponents; and the high-level information operations effort was, during the campaign, as a rule, weak. Information operations should be conducted at several levels: they are not just a tactical military activity.

No Matter What Kids, It's Meatballs For Supper

A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme. Read More at The Guardian

Something to keep in mind during the ongoing Persian dog & pony show.