Free Republic

On Wednesday’s CBS "Early Show,"co-host Hannah Storm, who tvnewser.com reports will soon be leaving the show, teased an upcoming segment about the controversy over the atheist-inspired movie, "The Golden Compass": "And Nicole Kidman on why the Church doesn't want your children to see her new movie." Of course, the "Church" has said no such thing, but rather the Catholic League has called for a boycott of the movie. Later during the segment, Storm talked with Catholic League President, Bill Donohue, as well as Ellen Johnson, the president of American Atheists. To Storm’s credit, she challenged Johnson by quoting the atheist...

70 punished in accidental B-52 flight By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 3 minutes ago The Air Force said Friday it has punished 70 airmen involved in the accidental, cross-country flight of a nuclear-armed B-52 bomber following an investigation that found widespread disregard for the rules on handling such munitions. "There has been an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards at Minot Air Force Base and Barksdale Air Force Base," said Maj. Gen. Richard Newton, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations. Newton was announcing the results of a six-week probe into the Aug. 29-30 incident...

Iran scrambling to counter Western psychological operations Iran is actively preparing countermeasures to what its military calls a psychological war being waged by the West over its nuclear program. Teheran’s military has been drafting measures to respond to Western propaganda broadcasts and other efforts intended to undermine the regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Officials said the measures included a crackdown on trade unions, students and other dissidents. __ Full Text, Subscribers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Northeast Asia Report China's cyberwar threat boosted by theft of top U.S. military technology __ East-Asia-Intel.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Focus on Israel and the Palestinians Israel's Mossad shaken by...

I don’t have the resources of the L.A. Times. Yet in my spare time from my full-time job, using widely available resources on the Web and contacts built up through blogging, I probably got a more accurate picture of what happened in Ramadi on November 13 than the paid reporter for the L.A. Times did. In doing so, I found I learned something important about reporting from Iraq in general. Big Media journalists often rely on sources that are unreliable. They don’t tell you the pressures these sources might be under from insurgents and terrorists. They refuse to tell you...

A senior al-Qaida operative deliberately planted information to encourage the US to invade Iraq, a double agent who infiltrated the network and spied for western intelligence agencies claimed last night. The claim was made by Omar Nasiri, a pseudonym for a Moroccan who says he spent seven years working for European security and intelligence agencies, including MI5. He said Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, who ran training camps in Afghanistan, told his US interrogators that al-Qaida had been training Iraqis. Libi was captured in November 2001 and taken to Egypt where he was allegedly tortured. Asked on BBC2's Newsnight whether Libi or...

NARAY, AFGHANISTAN — The first words 1st Lt. Daniel Hampton learned in Pashto were ones he had heard time and time again in the remote reaches of eastern Afghanistan: "Mana raka radio," or "Give me one radio." Hampton's Afghanistan "combat" has turned him into something of a disc jockey, running a small radio station that broadcasts from this American firebase into the Kamdesh district of Nuristan, along the Pakistan border — the target of a U.S. counterinsurgency effort to defeat Taliban-led militants. Hampton has handed out about 4,000 small radios, sometimes distributing them while his Afghan journalists report at events...

Hizbollah handed out bundles of cash on Friday to people whose homes were wrecked by Israeli bombing, consolidating the Iranian-backed group's support among Lebanon's Shi'ites and embarrassing the Beirut government. "This is a very, very reasonable amount. It is not small," said Ayman Jaber, 27, holding a wad he had just picked up from Hizbollah of $12,000 in banknotes wrapped in tissue. Israeli and U.S. officials have voiced concern that Hizbollah will entrench its popularity by moving fast -- with Iranian money -- to help people whose homes were destroyed or damaged in the 34-day conflict with Israel. Hizbollah has...

PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUES "Propaganda Techniques" is based upon "Appendix I: PSYOP Techniques" from "Psychological Operations Field Manual No.33-1" published by Headquarters; Department of the Army, in Washington DC, on 31 August 1979 (from http://www.zoehouse.com/is/sco/proptech.html) Knowledge of propaganda techniques is necessary to improve one's own propaganda and to uncover enemy PSYOP stratagems. Techniques, however, are not substitutes for the procedures in PSYOP planning, development, or dissemination. Techniques may be categorized as: Characteristics of the content self-evident. additional information is required to recognize the characteristics of this type of propaganda. "Name calling" and the use of slogans are techniques of this nature. ...

The recent anniversary of the April 18, 1942 the Doolittle raid raised the question of how the press of today might have reported on the event. At the time, the Doolittle raid, as militarily ineffective as it was, proved to be an enormously popular morale boost for the American people and their allies. However, times have changed. Here's a likely report, of the 1942 event, but as it would be reported by today's media. New York Times, April 19, 1942: "AIR RAID ON TOKYO. In what the Roosevelt Administration described as retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United...

The 213 Things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the U.S. Army.... 1. Not allowed to watch Southpark when I'm supposed to be working. 2. My proper military title is "Specialist Schwarz" not "Princess Anastasia". 3. Not allowed to threaten anyone with black magic. 4. Not allowed to challenge anyone's disbelief of black magic by asking for hair. 5. Not allowed to get silicone breast implants. 6. Not allowed to play “Pulp Fiction” with a suction-cup dart pistol and any officer. 7. Not allowed to add “In accordance with the prophesy” to the end of answers I give...

A Pentagon document shows that the U.S. army is monitoring and collecting information on anti-war activists across the United States, NBC reported. The network obtained a classified Pentagon document which lists four dozen anti-war meetings or demonstrations that took place in the U.S. over a 10-month period. The document also included anti-nuclear protests staged in Nebraska on the 50th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Nagasaki. The Pentagon describes all of these events as threats, says William Arkin, the former Army intelligence officer, who obtained the secret documents. According to NBC, the document says that the U.S. military is...

The media center in Fayetteville, N.C., would be the envy of any global communications company. In state of the art studios, producers prepare the daily mix of music and news for the group's radio stations or spots for friendly television outlets. Writers putting out newspapers and magazines in Baghdad and Kabul converse via teleconferences. Mobile trailers with high-tech gear are parked outside, ready for the next crisis. The center is not part of a news organization, but a military operation, and those writers and producers are soldiers. The 1,200-strong psychological operations unit based at Fort Bragg turns out what its...

No one is sure how well psychological operations have worked in Afghanistan or Iraq, but that's not stopping efforts to step them up, using contractors to do it. From the State Department to the Pentagon, winning hearts and minds is an increasingly important element of U.S. national security strategy. But while Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes has been the highest-profile example of U.S. public relations in action, the Defense Department quietly has been tinkering with its own systems of overseas influence. Among these are psychological operations, or PSYOPS. But after-action reports on the invasion...

The Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense commissioned this report. He did so at the recommendation of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense-level Information Operations Steering Committee. The Committee decided in its March 9, 2004, meeting that a review of psychological operations (PSYOP) lessons learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) was in order. ----

SYDNEY, Australia - The U.S. military said Wednesday it was investigating a report carried on an Australian television network that claimed American soldiers in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two Taliban fighters and then used the action to taunt other Islamic militants. The SBS television network broadcast video footage that purportedly showed U.S. soldiers burning the bodies of the suspected Taliban fighters in the hills outside the southern village of Gonbaz, near the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. The network said the footage was taken by a freelance journalist, Stephen Dupont, who told The Associated Press he was embedded with...

Extremist militias could be defeated within three years, Canadian says KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- Afghanistan's insurgency can be defeated within two or three years, a top Canadian commander said yesterday, offering a more hopeful view of the situation than other suggestions that Canadian troops would keep fighting for two decades. Colonel Steve Bowes, commander of the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar, said the extremist militias that plague rural Afghanistan could be eliminated much faster than previously estimated if international donors help the country recover from years of war. "It could take two years, best-case scenario," Col. Bowes said. As he spoke,...

SYLVANIA -- Army Specialist Matthew Drake still feels the pain every day from a suicide car bomb that cut short his service in Iraq. But now with some donations and help from a lot of people, he'll get out of the hospital, and back home with his parents. Four other soldiers in the unit died the day Drake was wounded. He was part of the Psychological Operations unit, communicating with civilians in Iraq, delivering messages regarding surrender and safety. Matthew remembers the unit's motto well. "Win the mind, win the day," said Drake. After months of treatment and rehabilitation, the...

According to a reader over at Libertas, David Koepp, the writer of the film, had this to say in an interview with Rue Morgue Magazine, [not available online]: “And now, as we see American adventure abroad’ he (David Koepp} continues ‘in my mind it’s certainly back to it’s original meaning, which is that the Martians in our movie represent American military forces invading the Iraqis, and the futility of the occupation of a faraway land is again the subtext” Koepp also told Newsweek: "I think the whole war [in the movie] is about water," he says. "I figure their planet...

INTERROGATION techniques at Guantanamo Bay, including playing Christina Aguilera's music to keep terror suspects awake, have been highlighted in a report. The first documented log of methods used by the US military to extract information from detainees details a range of techniques that range from a satirical puppet show to making a suspect growl at pictures of terrorists. The 84-page document, obtained by Time magazine, concerns the interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani, the so-called 20th hijacker - an alleged acquaintance of Osama bin Laden and an intended participant in the September 11 attacks. The often hour-by-hour log spans a period...

New York - TIME has obtained the first documented look inside the highly classified realm of military interrogations since the Gitmo Camp at Guantanamo Bay opened. The document is a secret 84-page interrogation log that details the interrogation of 'Detainee 063' at Guantanamo Bay. It is a remarkable look into the range of techniques and methods used for the interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani, who is widely believed to be the so-called 20th hijacker, a compatriof Osama bin Laden and a man who had tried to enter the U.S. in August 2001 to take part in the Sept. 11 attacks....