Free Republic

U.S. to Ramp Up Afghan Infowar with 'Aggressive Actions' -- Contractor to Bring About 'Desired Effects' in Global MediaThe next phase of a global information-warfare campaign to influence public and media perceptions about U.S. operations in Afghanistan is unfolding, according to an updated U.S. Forces-Afghanistan (USFOR-A) planning document that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has located. “The information domain is a battlespace, and it is one in which USFOR-A must take aggressive actions to win the important battle of perception,” according to the project’s modified Performance Work Statement (PWS), dated June 7. Consequently, the Dept. of Defense, via the U.S....

Ordinary people can only guess at the goings-on at the meetings of the secretive Bilderberg Group, which is bringing together the world's financial and political elite this week. Conspiracy theories abound as to what is discussed and who is there. Why, asks Tom de Castella?The belief in secret cabals running the world is a hardy perennial. And on Thursday perhaps the most controversial clandestine organisation of our times - the Bilderberg Group - is meeting behind closed doors. In the manner of a James Bond plot, up to 150 leading politicians and business people are to gather in a ski...

President Obama and his friends in the media want the public to think Americans serving in uniform are just fine and dandy with homosexual conduct in the military. This view is being spread through a series of selective leaks from the Pentagon's Comprehensive Review Working Group, which is putting the finishing touches on a report regarding the future of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Mr. Obama has promised the fringe special-interest activists who helped him win the 2008 election that he will deliver what for them is the symbolic victory of opening barracks to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and the...

TORONTO, ON – The Information Warfare Monitor (Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and the SecDev Group, Ottawa) and the Shadowserver Foundation announce the release of Shadows in the Cloud: An investigation into cyber espionage 2.0. The report documents a complex ecosystem of cyber espionage that systematically targeted and compromised computer systems in India, the Offices of the Dalai Lama, the United Nations, and several other countries. Members of the research team are holding a news conference at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 6, to discuss their latest findings and to answer questions from the media....

 "The world is wrong side up. It needs to be turned upside down in order to be right side up." Billy Sunday There couldn't be a more true statement made about what I've been seeing on the internet of late.  YouTube allows terrorists sympathizers (or worse) to use YouTube servers to host videos that the terrorists then post links for downloading or embed on their websites.   Many of the terrorist blogs and websites are on blogspot.com, a Google owned hosting service.  Facebook allows all manner of anti-Semitic groups to exist.            There's even a LOVELY group called  "F*ck...

Wars of Ideas and THE War of Ideas Authored by Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria, II. Added June 12, 2008 Type: Monograph 62 Pages   Cost: Free The author discusses several types of wars of ideas in an effort to achieve a better understanding of what wars of ideas are. That knowledge, in turn, can help inform strategy. It is important to note, for instance, that because ideas are interpreted subjectively, it is not likely that opposing parties will "win" each other over by means of an ideational campaign alone. Hence, physical events, whether intended or incidental, typically play determining...

An unclassified 2006 report by the Strategic Studies Department of the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations University relates the story of how Freepers, followed by others in the blogosphere, took down Dan Rather over the forged Killian memos as a way to demonstrate the growing ability of individuals using the Internet to influence the world at large.The report also discusses the feasibility of "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers" for information warfare and of the reticence the military has toward using the Internet for disinformation campaigns.The report was authored by Maj. James Kinniburgh and Dr. Dorothy Denning. The authors demonstrate...

Links to both a Liveleak embedded video and the Torrent if that stops working. The Islamic hackers are hitting Liveleak hard over it though.

Cyber Vigilantes Track Extremist Web Sites, Intelligence Experts Balk at Effort MIAMI, Fla. — While the debate grows on how to tackle global jihadism on the Internet, some security experts warn that "cyber vigilantes" — people who track and help shut down terror-related Web sites — are compromising government investigations with their amateur sleuthing tactics. Michael Radu, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an expert on terror-related Web sites, said the government is already overburdened trying to monitor the thousands of sites on the Web believed to contain radical Muslim messages. These cyber vigilantes, he said,...

CRITICS of the war in Iraq like to claim they "oppose the mission" but "support the troops." But the experience of Vietnam shows that turning our backs on the mission always means turning our backs on the courage of those who fought for that mission, and what they achieved through their skill and sacrifice. Consider the battle that ended 40 years ago today, when US Marines and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops retook the Imperial Palace at Hue, South Vietnam's third largest city, from Communist forces after a 27-day siege. The fight for Hue tested the Marines...

A People’s Information Support Team is a Civilian Irregular Information volunteer auxiliary on-line working group collaborating on electronic media engagement of oppositional, neutral and friendly blogs, forums, discussion groups and websites.  Irregulars have no official Table of Organization and Equipment and are under no obligation to follow doctrine, but this particular PIST  is a five-person element composed of a PSYOP officer Team Chief,  a noncommissioned officer Assistant Team Chief, two PSYOP specialists Civilian Irregular Counterpropagandists with photography, videography, journalism or editing skills; and an analyst with linguistic and area studies specialties.Capabilities to be developed: Disseminate selected  public information to target audiences. Counter enemy...

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. - An Afghan who worked with the CIA two decades ago told a military court Tuesday that a Brooklyn Marine lied about why his special ops unit gunned down unarmed civilians in March 2007. The Marines claimed they fired in self-defense at attacking insurgents as their convoy sped 12 miles back to base after a harmless roadside bomb blast on March 4. < snip > "I swear to Allah and on the Koran not to lie to you," said Qumandan, who a source said worked with the CIA in the 1980s while fighting Soviet military occupiers. "We...

I was studying "Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group" and posted a comment on'Trans-Regional Web Initiative' Friday, 18 January 2008 by cannoneerno4.( Excellent article ) USSOCOM: new multiple language web sites. They are outsourcing the effort to build websites in different languages to counter the Terrorist propaganda, lies, and present USA efforts in balanced terms in support of U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) in the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). And I suspect the military are scared as hell of it, will blanket it with all variations of rules, regulations and red tape. A blogger in the Military must get permission...

HERE'S AN ODD LITTLE Hillary Clinton proposal: She wants a government blogging team. At first blush, the idea could cut either way--nutty or silly. We might even call it ridiculous, if we weren't busy laughing at it. So let's do what bloggers always do and go contrarian. Yes, let's take Clinton seriously. Let's consider whether her idea of a team of government bloggers has merit.

It has been clearly established that terrorist organizations have adopted unusual and innovative ways of using cutting-edge online technologies to expand their movements. Al-Qa`ida’s principal media wing, al-Sahab Media Production, has recently released a flood of new audio and video recordings over Arabic-language internet chat forums, and has even solicited open questions from forum participants to be addressed by al-Qa`ida’s second-incommand, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Yet, while much time and thought has been dedicated to studying the physical content broadcast over these chat forums, there has been far less attention focused on studying the individual users who populate them. In fact, during...

Last year's scamnesty bill had widespread support among the powers-that-be, with the president, the Democrat majority and mainstream media all singing its praises.  Yet it went down to defeat, slain by a new-media coalition of talk radio and blogosphere warriors.  Working tirelessly to expose the truth and rally the grassroots, they became a David who slew a Goliath.  Forty-three years ago it was a different world.  Ted Kennedy had co-authored the "Immigration Reform Act of 1965," which created a situation wherein 85 percent of our immigrants hail from the Third World and Asia.  He took to the Senate floor, claimed...

It is the conclusion of this thesis that Islamic law forms the doctrinal basis for the jihadi threat that can only be understood through an unconstrained review of the Islamic law of jihad. Answering the three research questions, it turns out that: • When the Chairman said that we have yet to read what our enemy’s have said, he confirmed that we have failed to do a doctrine-based threat assessment of the enemy; • Had the IC done so, it would have quickly found that the doctrinal basis of the jihadi threat is the law of jihad in Islamic law...

Al Qaeda in Iraq knew they could not defeat the United States on the battlefield so they planned to defeat the U.S. at home. In 1968, the communists in Vietnam threw themselves against the U.S. Military with all they had in the Tet Offensive. They were defeated and utterly destroyed. The media, however, convinced the American people that the communists were strong and Walter Cronkite told the world the war was unwinnable. A desperate, suicidal offensive that ended in military failure became the path to victory for the communists. They defeated America on the homefront, not on the battlefield. This...

Joseph Shahda: Internet Counterterrorism Shadow Warrior Jerry Gordon In the world of special ops against Islamic terrorism, there is group of talented private “shadow warriors” engaged in fighting the little known “internet Jihad” war. One of those “privateers”, Joseph Shahda, emerged from the shadows in a series of investigative articles by New York Times reporter, Michael Moss, that appeared on October 15th and 21st. The first article discussed the internet Jihadis themselves, including, most dramatically, 21-year-old Samir Khan of North Carolina who ran an internet relay for al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, seemingly with impunity. In the October 21st...

Media And War: As the battle for Fallujah raged during 2004, the world's media gave it front-page treatment — almost all of it negative. Now U.S. intelligence analysts say the media deserve some blame for the setback there.A report looking back at the first battle of Fallujah, which led to a U.S. withdrawal of forces from that city, concludes that a major reason for the U.S. retreat wasn't military incompetence or an unbeatable foe; no, it was the media. "The outcome of a purely military contest in Fallujah was always a foregone conclusion — coalition victory," according to a report...