This Is A Battle For The Unconscious Mind

The quote from the recorded message: "Fear no one. Do not be afraid of jail. Do not fear death," shows classic activation of the God archetype.  The psychological power of same is the hitherto unmentioned (except at least once on SMC) real problem for us of the GWOT.

From a 2007 SMC post (a classic - must read again):

We will never be able to reach with words the Allah-intoxicated Islamist any more than reason can prevail upon someone whose unconscious is in the thrall of an activated God archetype anywhere.

For such cases, there are expedient means (not necessarily kinetic) that cannot be openly discussed in a public forum.
Remember, this is a battle for the unconscious mind.

Station Venezuela -- Elevator Pitch For Cred

A boilerplate plan (though pilcrow 7 suggests another influence program - one that is serious - is operational).

Dig the de rigueur polling - just like in mil IO & domestic housekeeping ops (inter alia)


SUBJECT: EMBASSY STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS PLAN -- COUNTERING CHAVEZ' ANTI-AMERICANISM
Warning: The above links to Q


(WARNING! The text above links to wikileaks.ch/cable/2008/03/08CARACAS420.html Access w/ extreme prudence)

Mr. Clarridge's Operation Eclipse Group

Stuff like this makes it worthwhile to get up in the morning. You just can't make this shit up.

[Clarridge] planned to set spies on ... the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai in hopes of collecting beard trimmings or other DNA samples that might prove Mr. Clarridge’s suspicions that the Afghan leader was a heroin addict, associates say.

Ho Ho Ho.

What leverage would this provide the US - already the provider of endless largesse to K?

Zilch.

Maybe we can lure him to JFK or Newark and let DEA take it from there?

Gotta be in the playbook. (Joke)

And a little farther along:

For all of the can-you-top-this qualities to Mr. Clarridge’s operation, it is a startling demonstration of how private citizens can exploit the chaos of combat zones and rivalries inside the American government to carry out their own agenda.

Ho Ho Ho²

Mr. Clarridge declined to be interviewed, but issued a statement that likened his operation, called the Eclipse Group, to the Office of Strategic Services, the C.I.A.’s World War II precursor.
“O.S.S. was a success of the past,” he wrote. “Eclipse may possibly be an effective model for the future, providing information to officers and officials of the United States government who have the sole responsibility of acting on it or not.”


Ho Ho Ho³

Still, associates said, Mr. Clarridge maneuvered against the Karzais last summer by helping promote videos, available on YouTube, purporting to represent the “Voice of Afghan Youth.” The slick [sic] videos disparage the president as the “king of Kabul” who regularly takes money from the Iranians, and Ahmed Wali Karzai as the “prince of Kandahar” who “takes the monthly gold from the American intelligence boss” and makes the Americans “his puppet.”

The videos received almost no attention when they were posted on the Internet, but were featured in July on the Fox News Web site in a column by Mr. North, who declined to comment for this article. Writing that he had “stumbled” on the videos on the Internet, he called them a “treasure trove.”

Ho Ho Ho

Later, Sabelle

Our public health propaganda poster girl has died, sad.

Story - Emaciated model became a symbol of anorexia's effect on fashion world

Gaddafi, Scanlan, & Julian (And Those Pesky SIPDIS-tagless cables)

Picking up on the conspiracy theory put forward by Iran’s leadership, which holds that the leaked U.S. diplomatic cables were released by the C.I.A. to undermine anti-colonialist governments, Colonel Qaddafi warned his listeners about the dark designs of “WikiLeaks which publishes information written by lying ambassadors in order to create chaos.”

And from the Grauniad:

5.03pm: Cables published by the Swedish press have disclosed that the US made efforts to get two Swedish companies - Colenco and Mahacos - from working with Iran on civilian nuclear reactors.

2.45pm: Gregg Mitchell at the Nation reports that Norway's Aftenposten, which was leaked a set of the cables, has shared its cache with more media organisations. Die Welt, the German paper, has been named and there are three more to come, a contact at the paper tells him.

The Aftenposten set has also been shared with Politilken in Denmark, Svenska Dagbladet in Sweden and the Dutch broadcaster RTL and newspaper NRC Handelsblad, as mentioned below.

Keen readers may note that Assange has also said he gave the cables to the Dutch pair referenced to above..

Question: what links Muammar Gaddafi and Teresa Scanlan, winner of Miss America 2011? The answer is they both made strong statements over the weekend against WikiLeaks.

Gaddafi blamed the Tunisia uprising on cables written by "ambassadors in order to create chaos". In answer to a question on WikiLeaks at the pageant, Scanlan, who (more conventionally) also played the piano and wore a bikini, said the release of the cables "was actually based on espionage, and when it comes to the security of our nation, we have to focus on security first and then people's right to know."

Nice.  No frickin rocket scientist her

PS

Must leave 'em all scratching their heads.

While they must be able to sense that something funny is happening, their luck runs out there.

This is because logic is not necessarily in play.

It may be part of the battle for the unconscious mind.

Or it may be shimmer.

Speaking of shimmer, French intel indicates that Mrs. Ben Ali decamped from Tunisia with 1.5 tons of gold - probably in late 2010 as they were getting their ducks in a row.

Out InThe Cold: Just For Laughs

 
Both of these gems are from Al Kamen's Post column.

Frosty exit for Wolfowitz
On Saturday, counterinsurgency guru and Center for a New American Security President John Nagl held his annual post-Christmas party at his home in Alexandria, attended by dozens of Iraq war veterans, Obama administration officials and journalists.

Also in attendance was Iraq war architect and former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whose jacket somehow vanished from the coat room.

In all likelihood, it was a simple case of mistaken identity.

But as Wolfowitz, now at the American Enterprise Institute, headed home without his coat on a frigid Washington night - temps around 26 degrees with gusting winds up to nearly 30 mph - conspiracy theorists couldn't help but wonder whether foul play was involved. The big question as the party was winding down: Did a disgruntled Iraq veteran walk off with the jacket as a last measure of revenge, or was it the work of a left-leaning Obama-ite?

For once, no one seemed to blame the journalists.


That's why it's a secret 

One of the favorite ploys used by government bureaucrats to thwart freedom-of-information requests (aside from just stalling) is the old B5 dodge. That refers to a section of the Freedom of Information Act that exempts from disclosure any information that the agency deems might be a sensitive part of the internal "deliberative processes" of government, such as inter- or intra-agency communications and such.

The National Security Archive recently won an appeal from the State Department over a B5 classification of something written by a department official on a proposed House resolution. The January 2000 resolution, sponsored by Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), expressed "the sense of the House of Representatives that Pakistan should be designated a state sponsor of terrorism."

A State Department official had written something on the proposed resolution that the department decided was exempt from disclosure. The Archive went through the department's appeals process and two years later won the right to see the hidden writing on the resolution.

It said: "What a bunch of crap!!"

Ah, the old deliberative process ain't what it used to be.

Arizona

At the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, I knew to within an hour or so when the bombs were to begin falling = "shock and awe."

I and a very few others I knew went thermo-short - assuming the Middle East was going to go apeshit. (You can check the tape.) As soon as war broke out, the market rallied like a mother, and I was creamed for days (if not longer) until I threw in the towel.

Later, people I knew were saying "of course the market rallied, the market always loves war." I knew that the market had no idea what a fuckup it was, but it rallied because it thought we had won a clear victory.

Oh well.

And - vis-à-vis the unrest, the PTB is really spinning the narrative that the AZ shooter was not political.  What nonsense.  But it seems to be working.  They are conducting BDA-type assessments of their work - polling - and the American people are answering as they have been instructed.  They do not believe that the fucktard was a wingnut.

Worry not.  Gov has this under control.

At least until the next incident.

Retards -- Not Just An AQI Asset

Perhaps the most ridiculous thing uttered by a non-impaired person lately.

The Pakistanis "understand that Afghanistan-Pakistan has become the single most important foreign policy issue to the United States, and their cachet has gone up." But they also realize that they may have reached the point of maximum leverage, this official said...



I ain't too sure about the "non-impaired" bit, now that I think about it.

Poor Effwit -- gurl can't bring herself to say retard. That's where an M1 steps in.

Rabbit Hole -- This Shit Is Definitely Not True

Long-suffering friends of this dubious blog will know that we are consistently sloppy on innumerate counts as pertains to style (Yes, and as pertains to most everything else.) Yet when we let loose the occasional canonating certitude --well, we are invariably smackaroo in the money.

Friendz know that much.

 
Tidy tensions 'tween WikiLeaks and the Papers.

[Assange] had become the victim of his own methods: someone at WikiLeaks, where there was no shortage of disgruntled volunteers, had leaked the last big segment of the documents, and they ended up at The Guardian in such a way that the paper was released from its previous agreement with Assange—that The Guardian would publish its stories only when Assange gave his permission.

Lots of good stuff for the careful reader, until this stinker:

“He is short of money and short of secrets,” someone who has worked extensively with Assange told me. “The whole thing has collapsed.”

This is not true, and then the writer tries to argue that the stateless nature of WL is a disadvantage.

Writer went down the rabbit hole.

And...

Government officials are also worried that foreign intelligence services may be trying to acquire the cable collection, a development that would heighten concerns about the safety of those named in the documents.

Do ya'think? 


That fucking cat is out of the bag already.  They need not wonder any longer.

Strangled or Straddled -- SIPDIS header tag

While hazily (20 y.o. Czek single malt -- yeah, go figure!) trawling through the WikiLeaks cable traffic mere fortnight ago I was able to peek a little deeper into the whole dump of 251,287 cables (fewer than 2000 have been publicly released by WL or the papers).

To begin with, although the State Dept reckoned it b mighty wise to load up SIPRNet with historical cable traffic going back to 1966, there are only 17 cables that date from 1966-1979. Nothing from 1979-1985

In January 1985, the spigot opened.

Also, there is no Top Secret material from State (AFAIK). Sorry, Cindy Sheehan & Cynthia MvKinney.

One fifth of the cables - over 50,000 are from Obama's State Dept.

Now we get to the good part. The feds have made it clear that they are looking for other leakers (aside from BM). Meatballs now know why.

Not all the State Dept cables obtained by WikiL bear the SIPDIS header tag.

And darn it by Golly -- there were no Grenada intervention cables. Just cesspools of wimpy diplo-chatter ´bout Dick and the regular household neocons remote controlling holographic airplanes on 911 at the behest of a bunch screwily transcribed names that rang New World Order jooo, writ large. What's that all about? Best ask Alex or Charlie.

And btw, is our blog-posty noosing of transition `tween `10 & `11 best described as bearing character of strangle or of straddle? (Sheesh, none of us Effwits can even remember the diff `tween micro and macro. So hey, don't bother wasting charitable answer on chump(s))

Kremlinology WL.0

A Stockholm Conspiracy - The Underbelly of Ukrainian Gas Dealings

There can be no other conclusion: Viktor Yanukovich, the president of Ukraine, served the commercial interests of an oligarch with whom he has close ties -- at the expense of his own country. And, in doing so, he also did Moscow a favor.


And we learn from WikiL that V. Putin "the richest man in Europe" probably has billions stashed in CH.


Other classified cables referred repeatedly to the "secretive Swiss-based oil trading firm Gunvor" as an alleged source of Putin's undisclosed wealth. The US ambassador in Moscow, John Beyrle, described the company as being closely connected to the Kremlin, and said its "secretive ownership is rumoured to include prime minister Putin".

Seal that Year w/ POMOnanigans & Hubris

Late to the party here.  I knew that you had been calling BS on McFizzle and saying that there is serious AQ over there (from your connections), but I just discovered that you (we) nailed the specific plot.

See M1 tweet of 2:07 AM Dec 13th.

It was out there for anybody to see, yet nobody but us called it.

There is nothing better than the SMC-op.  Others may compete, but nobody does what we do.  Really.

They love us.  (Ho, ho, ho).

Syndication in Afghan border area

Interesting spin (positive) being put on these developments by US military.

Kinda funny. When groups of adversaries band together to combat a common enemy, that is pretty much the textbook definition of the shit hitting the fan for somebody.

In the US military's reckoning then, it was a measure of desperation when the Western allies joined with the USSR to fight Hitler. Musta heralded sure victory for the Nazis.

From tomorrow's print NYT:

Rival militant organizations on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have increasingly been teaming up in deadly raids, in what military and intelligence officials say is the insurgents’ latest attempt to regain the initiative after months of withering attacks from American and allied forces.

and

The Punjabi groups, many of which were created by Pakistani intelligence to fight India’s interests in Kashmir, now appear to be teaming up with Pashtun groups like the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban to fight their creators, the Pakistani intelligence and security services.

Ding-a-ling? You be the judge

During the morning portion of the trial, Lakin said he had gone to a chapel and done some soul-searching about whether to disobey orders.

I think the preponderance of the evidence would strongly lead in only one direction.

Worst kept secret in town

But the real strategy appears to be for the United States to do most of the work itself — at least until the Pakistanis step up.

The admin goes to great effort to paint Afghanistan as manageable.

The CIA has definitely been saying that the shit is not going well in Afghanistan.

Not to mention what they must be saying about our slow-motion nightmare (not WikiL silly), Pakistan.

PS: I forgot to mention that WaPo had a whole series of pieces starting a week or so ago saying that things in Afghanistan can be handled.  The narrative was carefully handled in Washington.

A Pull Too Far

Greetings old Thai hands! You've probably seen this:

But on Tuesday it appeared that Thailand had whisked Mr. Bout to the airport without informing the Russians. 

“This information did not arrive at the embassy officially,” the chief of the Russian Embassy’s consular service, Andrei Dvornikov, told the Interfax news agency. “There were neither notes nor telephone calls.” 


Mr. Bout’s Thai lawyer said that the Thai authorities had not informed him; Mr. Bout’s wife, Alla; or the Russian Embassy in Bangkok about the move. 


Pretty good service from the locals there.  I'm sure you'll agree, however, an op like this - in which a sensitive-type Russkie is handed over to the US while keeping the Russian govt in the dark - requires a level of pull in both DC and Bangkok that probably exceeds that of DEA.

Bout apparently felt safe everywhere outside USA (though he should have known about our client states, like Thailand).  Kinda' cool that Ivan got no notice. Spookishly choreographed.

(Thanks B!)

Hey Kidz -- Come Chill w/ Mr. Headley

If we are seeing this level of hang out, then it has to be a hundred times worse, you're thinking? LOL -- Me too. 

American authorities sent David C. Headley, a small-time drug dealer and sometime informant, to work for them in Pakistan months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite a warning that he sympathized with radical Islamic groups, according to court records and interviews. Not long after Mr. Headley arrived there, he began training with terrorists, eventually playing a key role in the 2008 attacks that left 164 people dead in Mumbai.

Cringe Is What F*g Does -- More Outsourced Torture In The Pipeline

The outsourced enhanced interogation games are still in play -- though operators are doing their fumbling best to get marks into climes of harsher interogation  w/o resorting to the more overt/Mossady characteristics of yesterday's extraordinary renditions (not that such things have been relegated to the annals of near-history quite yet).

Long-suffering friends of this shack might have deduced by now that we're not particularly adverse to renditions per se. In fact, we find them kinda' sexy. But we find ourselves quite the squeamish pussies when torture comes into play. POTUS 41 weeped when he indulged in comparative (vis-à-vis. 43) prisoner-treatment reflections. Oh well, old men are known to suffer from affect-incontinence.

Still & yet, we come upon ourselves startle-flinchy cringing at the thought that there might be more -- and recent at that -- Arars in the pipeline.

Quite the pity we're such hyper-sensitive f*gs.

We can't say more than this but give us a few months and, well....