Archive for April 7th, 2008
Military Report: Secretly ‘Recruit or Hire Bloggers’
Military Report: Secretly ‘Recruit or Hire Bloggers’
By Noah Shachtman
A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested “clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers.”
Since the start of the Iraq war, there’s been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs — and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops’ time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.
This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, “Blogs and Military Information Strategy,” offers a third approach — co-opting bloggers, or even putting them on the payroll. “Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering,” write the report’s co-authors, James Kinniburgh and Dororthy Denning.
Lt. Commander Marc Boyd, a U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman, says the report was merely an academic exercise. “The comments are not ‘actionable’, merely thought provoking,” he tells Danger Room. “The views expressed in the article publication are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy or position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, USSOCOM [Special Operations Command], or the Joint Special Operations University.”
Denning, a professor at Naval Postgraduate School, adds in an e-mail, “I got some positive feedback from people who read the article, but I don’t know if it led to anything.”
The report introduces the military audience to the “blogging phenomenon,” and lays out a number of ways in which the armed forces — specifically, the military’s public affairs, information operations, and psychological operations units — might use the sites to their advantage.
Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence… to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering. On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.
An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. Still, there are people in the military today who like to blog. In some cases, their talents might be redirected toward operating blogs as part of an information campaign. If a military blog offers valuable information that is not available from other sources, it could rise in rank fairly rapidly.
Denning, the report’s author, has promoted controversial opinions before. In the early 1990s, when she was chair of the Georgetown University’s computer science department, Denning emerged as the leading advocate for the so-called “Clipper Chip,” a cryptographic device for protecting communications — until the government wanted to listen in. The project was cancelled by 1996.
In her 2006 paper, Denning warns that blogs can and will be used by America’s enemies. These sites, she argues, can also be used to serve U.S. government interests.
There are certain to be cases where some blog, outside the control of the U.S. government, promotes a message that is antithetical to U.S. interests, or actively supports the informational, recruiting and logistical activities of our enemies. The initial reaction may be to take down the site, but this is problematic in that doing so does not guarantee that the site will remain down. As has been the case with many such sites, the offending site will likely move to a different host server, often in a third country. Moreover, such action will likely produce even more interest in the site and its contents. Also, taking down a site that is known to pass enemy EEIs (essential elements of information) and that gives us their key messages denies us a valuable information source. This is not to say that once the information passed becomes redundant or is superseded by a better source that the site should be taken down. At that point the enemy blog might be used covertly as a vehicle for friendly information operations. Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data—merely a few words or phrases—may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility with the audience. Better yet, if the blogger happens to be passing enemy communications and logistics data, the information content could be corrupted. If the messages are subtly tweaked and the data corrupted in the right way, the enemy may reason that the blogger in question has betrayed them and either take down the site (and the blogger) themselves, or by threatening such action, give the U.S. an opportunity to offer the individual amnesty in exchange for information. (emphasis mine)
(Hook up: Cryptome.org; photo: Peter Starman / WIRED)
US demands to see Swiss-Iran contract (Made after the big US hold-up against switzerland gold)
Imperial US demands to see Swiss-Iran contract
(Made after the big US hold-up against switzerland gold) about 1300 tons taken by US for dollars paper with no value-
That’s why swiss sign a contract with Iran. The latest big pressure against Swiss for his gold was hitler in ww2.
Dib
By BALZ BRUPPACHER, Associated Press Writer
BERN, Switzerland – The U.S. has demanded to see a Swiss contract for natural gas supplies from Iran to see whether it violates an American sanctions law against Tehran, the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland said Sunday.
A posting on the U.S. Embassy Web site raises the question of whether neutral Switzerland’s position as representative of American interests in Iran and Cuba could be affected.
“At this time, the Swiss have a mandate as our protecting power in Cuba and Iran,” the Web site said in response to a “frequently asked question” on whether the Swiss role was “in jeopardy.”
The Swiss have represented U.S. interests in Havana since diplomatic relations with Cuba were broken nearly 50 years ago, and in Tehran since Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in 1979.
The Swiss Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the embassy posting.
Washington, which already had objected to the deal with Iran as violating the spirit of U.N. sanctions against Iran, made a formal request to see the contract March 17, the Embassy said.
That was the day it was signed in the presence of Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey during a visit to Tehran.
U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Lisbeth Keefe said Washington originally had asked to see the contract last summer, long before the signing.
The Swiss have yet to produce the contract, the embassy said.
Washington accuses Iran of using its nuclear program to produce nuclear weapons, and has spearheaded U.N. sanctions against the country. Tehran, however, says it is only wants to produce electricity for peaceful uses.
The 25-year contract, worth between $28 billion and $42 billion, is between Swiss energy trading company EGL and the state-owned National Iranian Gas Export Company.
The U.S. Embassy said the State Department “closely reviews” oil and gas deals with Iran in view of the U.S. Iran Sanctions Act.
Calmy-Rey has said that the contract is in line with Switzerland’s rights as an independent country with its own strategic interests to defend.
EGL, majority-owned by Axpo Holding AG, has said gas deliveries from Iran will begin in 2009. It plans to sell the Iranian gas to European customers.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080331/ap_on_re_eu/switzerland_us_iran
Petraeus Testimony Next Week Will Signal Iran Attack
Petraeus Testimony Next Week Will Signal Iran Attack
Today the London Telegraph reported that “British officials gave warning yesterday that America’s commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government. A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran’s intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian militiary facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment.”
The neocon lacky Petraeus has had his script written for him by Cheney, and Petraeus together with neocon warmonger Ryan Crocker, the US governor of the Green Zone in Baghdad, will present Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday with the lies, for which the road has been well paved by neocon propagandists such as Kimberly Kagan, that “the US must recognize that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq.”
Don’t expect Congress to do anything except to egg on the attack. On April 3 the International Herald Tribune reported that senators and representatives have made millions of dollars from their investments in defense companies totaling $196 million. Rep. Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is already on board with the attack on Iran. The London Telegraph quotes Skelton: “Iran is the bull in the china shop. In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the Shi’ite groups, whether they be political or military.”
All Skelton knows is what the war criminal Bush regime tells him. If Iran really does have all these connections, then it behooves Washington to cease threatening Iran and to make nice with Iran in order to stabilize Iraq and extract the US from the nightmare.
Reporting from Tehran on April 4, Reuters quotes Mohsen Hakim, whose father, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, an ally of the Maliki US puppetgovernment in Iraq: “Tehran, by using its positive influence on the Iraqi nation, paved the way for the return of peace to Iraq and the new situation is the result of Iran’s efforts.”
Instead of thanking Iran and working with Iran diplomatically to restore stability to Iraq, the Bush regime intends to expand the nightmare with a military attack on Iran. Ryan Crocker was quick to dispute Hakim’s report that Iran had used its influence to end the fighting in Basra. Crocker alleged that Iran had started the fighting. The absurdity of Crocker’s claim is obvious as even the neocon US media reported that the fighting in Basra was started by the US and Maliki in an effort to clear out the Shi’ite al-Sadr militias. Most experts saw the attack on al-Sadr for what it was: an effort to remove a potential threat to the US supply line from Kuwait in the event of a US attack on Iran.
Crocker alleges that the rockets dropping on the Green Zone during the Basra fighting were made in 2007 in Iran. As should be obvious even to disengaged Americans, if Iran were to arm the Iraqi insurgency, the insurgents would have modern weapons to counter US helicopter gunships and heavy tanks. The insurgents have no such weapons. The neocon lie that Iran is the cause of the Iraqi insurgency is just another Bush regime lie like the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and connections to al Qaeda and the lie that the Taliban in Afghanistan attacked the US.
The Bush regime will tell any lie and orchestrate any event in order to “finish the job” in the Middle East.
“Finishing the job” means to destroy the ability of Iraq, Iran, and Syria to provide support for the Palestinians and for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon against Israeli aggression. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Syria might simply give up and become another American client state. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Israel can steal the rest of the West Bank along with the water resources in southern Lebanon.
That is what “the war on terror” is really about.
The entire world knows this. Consequently, the US and Israel are essentially isolated. The US can only count on the support that it can bribe and pay for.
At the NATO-Russian summit in Bucharest, Romania, on April 4, Russian President Putin said: “No one can seriously think that Iran would dare attack the U.S. Instead of pushing Iran into a corner, it would be far more sensible to think together how to help Iran become more predictable and transparent.”
Of course it would, but that is not what the warmonger Bush regime wants.
Perhaps the British government has derailed the plot to attack Iran by leaking in advance to the London Telegraph the disinformation Cheney has prepared for Petraeus and Crocker to deliver to the complicit US Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday. On the other hand, the US puppet media is likely to bury the real story and to trumpet Petraeus claims that Iran has, in effect, already declared war on the US by sending weapons to kill US troops in Iraq.
By next Thursday we will know from how the Petraeus-Crocker dog and pony show plays in the US Congress and media whether the Bush Regime will commit yet another war crime by attacking Iran.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19684.htm
