Hail and Farewell: Ralph Buckles has passed away

He was the last living US WW1 Veteran.

Bill Whittle Gets “It” – “This is a once-in-history idea” – Now what?

I came to this by Bill Whittle via a post by Zombie:

In fact, in all of human history, there has been only one genuinely progressive, genuinely liberating idea: a lightning bolt across the pages of history – the why in 1776, the how in 1787 – the idea of limited government, god-given rights, personal liberty and rule by the vast collective wisdom and industry of the common man, and not by the bored, pampered and self-hating elites that have run everything before and since. This is a once-in-history idea. This is why we have to conserve it. We have to conserve this fundamentally liberal idea.

Brilliant! I don’t think it would be possible to sum things up with less words without loosing clarity.

So if that is “It”, what is the opposite?

When a society – after generations of hard work, sacrifice and hardship – reaches a certain level of prosperity, “Progressives” like Bill Maher, Janeane Garofolo, Rosie O’Donnell and Gaius Gracchus – that last Progressive died in 121 BC – assume that the prosperity is endless, and push for more and more people to get more and more goods and services for less and less work. Why? Because – as today, in America, as with the British Empire, the French Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Ottomans, the Mongols, Rome, Greece, Eqypt, Babylon… They do it for political power. They live for political power. This “Progressivism” is ancient, recurring, tyrannical and ruinous.

And we voted for it. Just like the Romans did.

It is not just the opposite of “It”. The opposite is the norm course of events.

Whittle explains how the USA got to where it is in terms that made me think of 5GW:

And so they asked themselves: if the vanguard of the revolution wasn’t going to be the worker, then who would it be? And the answer they came up with was: the dispossessed.

The Neo-Marxist revolution would not attack the capitalist economy – that was too successful. The target of the new Marxist revolution would be the Culture.

Marxist philosophers like Antonia Gramsci, and later, Saul Alinski – personal hero to such present-day fellow travelers as Chris Matthews, Hillary Clinton and, of course, The President of the United States – started to create narratives – stories – about America. This rapidly evolved into a philosophy called “Critical Theory” and the idea of Critical Theory was to attack the dominant culture – that would be us – from all sides, simultaneously.

[…]

The objectives of the Frankfurt School, of Gramsci and Alinski in their assault on the culture, were laid out in detail and were very clear: Eliminate not only the voice, but the very idea of reason. Destroy history. Delegitimize shared morality. Medicate instead of discipline children. Promote the idea that problems are so complex that only elitists, experts and academics can discuss, let alone solve them. A later pair of American Marxist philosophers developed what became known as the Cloward-Piven strategy: overwhelm America’s social systems – welfare, health care, immigration, etc. by telling people they were owed things, and by intentionally overwhelming them, cause them to collapse – leaving nothing but smoking wreckage, and no where to turn but to the government.

This is certainly “Secret War” or “War of Hidden Movements”. Most of us don’t even know it is going on. Whittle calls even says:

we are in an information war, a battle of narratives…We are, together, soldiers in this narrative war for America and for civilization

The first part sounds like Memetic Engineering. The second part sound like Strategic Citizen 5GW.

So…how do “we” win? Using a Titanic analogy he gets to:

We need to ram the iceberg. We need to hit it head-on. We need to put in all the power we have – all of the power – and go right at the heart of that monster. Because everyone talks about what the iceberg did to Titanic, but no one talks about what Titanic did to the iceberg.

That sounds like degrading the 5GW into a 4GW. Maybe.

Any Specifics?

We, for the first time in human history, have an example of what a free society looks like. We, for the first time in history, are children of the only real progressives in all of human history. And we, for the first time in history, have the technology that allows common people to talk to each other, to encourage and inform each other, and to make an end run around the suicidal elites and their suicidal, dying media organs.

Is that it? I think (and it sounds right to me) he is suggesting every meme/false-story/false-narrative on the  must be challenged whether it it is in public or in our institutions with four intermediate ends in mind:

• Slow/prevent/rollback the memes opposed to “It”
• Convince the undecided to join on the side of “It”
• Discourage those opposed to “It”
• Encourage those on the side of “It”

What is the end goal for “It”? How about this blast from the past:

[…]that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

So now what?

Interesting obituary: “Luckily, a good Polish man gave my father a rifle and 150 bullets”…

…in today’s Milwaukee Journal:

By 1941, however, the Nazis had taken away most of the town’s Jewish men.

“Luckily, a good Polish man gave my father a rifle and 150 bullets,” Jack said. “My father started the nucleus of a mostly Jewish fighting group – the majority were Russian Jews – with other Polish and Ukrainian and Russian fighters.”

On Sept. 23, 1942, the Nazis and police began rounding up all the remaining Jewish residents of the town.

“They took us out, put us in the middle of a road and counted everyone,” she later recalled in a news article. She was then a 32-year-old mother, holding the hands of her daughters, ages 4 and 2.

The situation was still fluid. She tried to get people to do something, anything, saying they should burn the town and run for the forests. People were too afraid to try.

“So she told her mother and sisters and daughters, ‘Let me try to find a place for us to hide,’ ” Jack said.

A policeman stopped her as she left the area. “Why waste a bullet on me now?” she argued. “You’re going to kill us all tomorrow.”

He let her leave.

She found a barn and tried to go back for her family, but by then there were too many guards. Even if she managed to get back to her family, there was no way they could escape together.

“She went back to the barn,” her son said. “And the next morning she heard the shots.”

Twenty-five members of her family and her husband’s family were killed.

“Three-hundred-eighty Jews were rounded up and taken to the edge of town, shot and buried in a mass grave,” said daughter Bella Smith.

Nazis began searching the countryside, including the barn where she was hiding. She was grazed by a bayonet as a Nazi stabbed the hay pile. That night, she crawled into the forest, alone for months.

“She didn’t know my father was alive,” her daughter said. “He didn’t know she was alive. He heard there may have been survivors and found her. She was down to 80 pounds and he carried her back to the partisan unit.”

The partisan group, which became known as the Kruk-Max Otryad, grew to include 150 fighters and more than 250 civilians in a family camp, the third-largest such group in Europe, Jack said.

“Mom was the nurse and a cook with the fighter group,” Jack said. “Theirs is like the story of the movie, ‘Defiance,’ about the Bielski Otryad.”

After liberation by the Russians in 1944, they lived at the Bindermichel displaced persons camp near Linz, Austria. There they were a rare married couple who survived the war, becoming surrogate parents to young people who had lost their own.

“They would walk these girls down the aisle when they married,” Jack said.

His father’s brother, in the U.S. since the 1920s, heard they were alive. He sent $100, enough for steerage tickets for the couple and son Jack. They first lived in Chicago, but soon settled in Milwaukee in 1946.

(old found draft post)Historical 5GW Example: The Anti-Nixon 5GW-ish Coup

Dec 31, 2008 @ 15:53

I should still write this up more fully, if I have time to get into it. The revelation was pretty shocking and way under-reported.

—

http://amicablecollisions.blogspot.com/2008/12/all-fbis-men.html

http://committeeofpublicsafety.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/deep-throats-coup-detat/

http://committeeofpublicsafety.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/the-deep-throat-dilemma/

https://purpleslog.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/the-joint-chiefs-of-staff-using-the-stenographer-as-their-agent-actively-spied-on-the-civilian-command-during-the-vietnam-war/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Throat_(Watergate)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Mark_Felt

Thinking About Apollo 11

I was too young to remember it, but I was inspired by it and the subsequent missions. I didn’t want them to stop. I wanted the Orbital stations, the moon colony, and the mars mission. I wanted my Science fiction future. I don’t want humans stuck on Terra Firma waiting for a natural or self-created extinction event. We need to get moving and get off this rock. The power of human imagination and ingenuity must be unleashed to fill the heavens. I still want a science fiction future for all of us.

“Southern States v. Lincoln”

Catholicgauze has it right.

There is no Texan right to succession.

There is madness in that kind of talk. I want no part of a political movement that seems okay with its “leaders” suggesting that sort of thing.

The matter was settled a long time ago.

The Union Forever.

5GW Thinking Snippet from Nikita Khrushchev

From the The Wednesday Report:

Nikita Khrushchev once said, “We cannot expect the American people to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism until they awaken one day to find they have Communism”.

That sounds familiar.

“What will be a great surprise to the American people is that the GRU and KGB had a larger budget for antiwar propaganda in the United States that it did for economic and military support of the Vietnamese”

A great example in Influence Warfare (and it is 5GW-ish too) from USNAVYVET2002:

The GRU and the KGB helped to fund just about every antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad. Funding was provided via undercover operatives or front organizations. These would fund another group that in turn would fund student organizations. The GRU also helped Vietnam fund its propaganda campaign as a whole.
What will be a great surprise to the American people is that the GRU and KGB had a larger budget for antiwar propaganda in the United States that it did for economic and military support of the Vietnamese. The antiwar propaganda cost the GRU more than $1 billion, but as history shows, it was a hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost. The antiwar sentiment created an incredible momentum that greatly weakened the U.S. military.”  [On page 78 of Stanislav Lunev’s and Ira Winkler’s book titled “Through the Eyes of the Enemy”]

Draft – Shadows of 5GW: The Default American PoV has become a Leftist POV

I started writing this back some time. I wrote out the rest of on a legal pad in long hand which I can not f*cking find at the moment! Since Seerov, is heading into this area, I want to publish what I have so far. I will re-write the rest shortly.

So here it is so far…

—–

I started writing this post a month ago, but just didn’t get back to it. A new post in the ever interesting Amicable Collisions, has prodded me to finish it. My post if more reference historical reference. His is future oriented. More on that in a later post.

Anyways, It has been occurring to me that the default American PoV has become Leftists

Half Sigma is noticing it too:

It seemed like Reagan turned things around and won a huge victory against the Left. During his eight years in office, the tax code was reformed, we won the Cold War, everyone preached the virtues of free market economics. So what happened?

During this time of apparent victory against the Left, the Left was taking over behind the scenes. With its power over Hollywood, the universities, and even the primary and secondary schools, they were able to wage a successful war against non-leftist values. Homosexuality became glorified, the magic word of “racism” became even a more powerful weapon of the left, the idea of Global Warming (which is fake) was promoted until it became the predominant thought and anyone who speaks the truth to it is shouted down as someone who denies science.

He says other stuff too (much of it way less polite), but you get the point.

Look at this part again:

….we won the Cold War…So what happened?

It might be useful to think of the Cold War as having three concurrent and overlapping Fifth Generation Warfare (5GW) efforts. The 5GWers were only vaguely aware of the efforts of the other 5GWs. Even then , they did not have the concept of 5GW to fully understand what was going on.

First recall that 5GW can be defined as…

5GW is the secret deliberative manipulation of actors, networks, institutions, states or any 0GW/1GW
/2GW/3GW/4GW forces to achieve a goal or set of goals across a combination of socio, economic, and political domains while attempting to avoid or minimize the retaliatory offensive or defensive actions/reactions of 0GW/1GW/2GW/3GW/4GW powered actors, networks, institutions, and/or states.

The American 5GW effort was created at the dawn of the cold war by a bunch of officials inside and outside of USGOV that put the US response to the Cold War on auto-pilot. The policy was containment. The framework was the layers of institutions and interlocking treaties.  The Military-Industrial was profit seeking agent to keep it going. TDAXP first pointed out this 5GW and tried to articulate on the radio interview. This  5GW took the path of Frog Boiling, and used somewhat partially the Puppet Master style and partially the Socio-Political Entrepreneur style. TDAXP would call this the State-without kind of 5GW.

The Soviet Union 5GW effort (the Active Measures 5GW) is best noted in this post by Adam Elkus enitled “5GW Deception Operations And The Soviet Precedent”:

For the Soviets, deception was a way of life. The Soviet Union—a secretive and paranoid totalitarian state—-sealed itself from outside influence and extensively utilized deception to mislead Western policymakers, journalists, and intelligence analysts. The cultlike nature of Soviet life has ample parallels to 5GW.
[…]
The Soviet Union’s main covert strategy involved in use of “Active Measures”—extensive attempts to undermine the West’s unity and influence its decision-making. The battlespace was truly worldwide, ranging from the Third World to the homeland. The Soviets relied on a worldwide cabal of agents and contacts to agitate against America and her allies through a series of front organizations. The methods of agitation ranged from black propaganda to sophisticated media campaigns. Agitation meshed with strategic influence operations utilizing agents and sympathizers highly placed within government, academia, and the press to mold both policy and public perception to Moscow’s benefit. Not all of the KGB’s proxies were committed believers—KGB officers also developed unwitting agents of influence for the purpose of spreading messages favorable to the USSR.

This was a Memetic-Engineering style of 5GW (really part 4GW, part 5GW) that also took the path of Frog Boiling, and had aspect of both being a state-without kind of 5GW and an insurgent 5GW kind of 5GW. The active measures 5GW created many prawns to carry its messages and weaken the morale and resolve of the West and to continually nudge the undecided in the Siovuiet direction. The Active Measures 5GW was working. Its practitioners thought they were winning and large numbers of the populations in West were becoming neutral or moving to the other side.

And then it was over.

FLICKR image from Kiel Bryant

FLICKR image from jimforest

The Soviet Union fell from the accumulated effects of decades of containment, along with: the inefficiency of socialism, extra pressures from a new US President and big negative effects from an ill-fated military adventure in Afghanistan.

This should be the age of the triumph and warmheartedness toward the ideas and institutions of Democratic Capitalism and conversely an age of ridicule and scorn toward the ideas and followers of the Left (e.g. Marxism, Socialism, Communism, Mao-ism, Trotskyism, Castro-ism, and The Cult Che).

Things haven’t worked out that way.

There was third cold war 5GW (that continues still today). It can be called the 5GW Institutional Long March.

At its foundation was an American fifth column of sorts, Leftists of many colors (e.g. Maoist, Trotskyist, Che Cultist), so-called Democratic Socialist, fellow travelers and useful idiots who where effected (ranging from nudging to more direct manipulation) in part by the Soviet Active measures 5GW. The failure of this non-kinetic 4GW by the SDS and other affiliated groups led to a more radical efforts by groups such as the Weathermen which also failed.

A new strategy was needed if “success” was to be achieved.

—

A lazy ass efficiency minded person like myself doesn’t like to do something twice. So, I have to find the rest of my notes this week, or just re-write the missing part.

“…the Joint Chiefs of Staff, using the stenographer as their agent, actively spied on the civilian command during the Vietnam War”

Interesting:

A Navy stenographer assigned to the National Security Council during the Nixon administration “stole documents from just about every individual that he came into contact with on the NSC,” according to newly declassified White House documents.

The two-dozen pages of memoranda, transcripts and notes — once among the most sensitive and privileged documents in the Executive Branch — shed important new details on a unique crisis in American history: when investigators working for President Richard Nixon discovered that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, using the stenographer as their agent, actively spied on the civilian command during the Vietnam War.
[…]
As Radford later described his work — in polygraph tests, sworn testimony, and interviews with historians and journalists — he spent 13 months illegally obtaining NSC documents and turning them over to his superiors, with the understanding that the two admirals were, in turn, funneling the materials to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and other top uniformed commanders. Radford’s espionage took many forms: making extra photocopies of documents entrusted to him as courier; retrieving crumpled drafts from “burn bags”; even brazenly rifling through Kissinger’s briefcase while the national security adviser slept on an overseas flight.
[…]
Radford’s stunning admission presented President Nixon with an unprecedented challenge to his wartime authority by the military’s top uniformed commanders — and with a delicate political situation. According to White House tapes released by the National Archives in 2000, and first published by this author in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in April 2002, Nixon wanted to prosecute Moorer for espionage but was convinced by Attorney General John N. Mitchell that the ensuing controversy would imperil Nixon’s secret foreign policy initiatives and do grave damage to the armed forces. Instead, Mitchell was sent to confront Moorer and tell him, as Mitchell put it, that “this ball game’s over with”; Radford’s home was wiretapped; and he and his immediate supervisor were eventually transferred to remote posts. But the president and his men had no doubt about the ultimate consumers of Radford’s espionage fruits.
[…]
Nixon and his men eventually concluded that Haig had been complicit in the Pentagon spying, but opted not to take any action against him.

One of the Email thingies: “The Year 1908”

I usually don’t pass this on, but the one from the PurpleMom was pretty interesting:<br />

This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine!
The year is 1908.
One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some statistics for the Year 1908 :

************ ********* ********* ******

The average life expectancy was 47 years.

Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles

Of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!

The average wage in 1908 was 22 cents per hour.

The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year .

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000
per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME .

Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!

Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which

Were condemned in the press AND the government as 'substandard. '

Sugar cost four cents a pound.

Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used

Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from

Entering into their country for any reason.

Five leading causes of death were:

1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The A American flag had 45 stars.

The population of Las Vegas , Nevada, was only 30!!!!

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea

Hadn't been invented yet.

There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.

Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write.

Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter
at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said, 'Heroin
clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind,regulates the stomach
and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.' ( Shocking?
DUH! )

Eighteen percent of households had at least

One full-time servant or domestic help.

There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE ! U.S.A. !

Now I forwarded this from someone else without typing

It myself, and sent it to you and others all over Canada & U.S.A

Possibly the world, in a matter of seconds!

Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.

IT STAGGERS THE MIND!!!!!!!!!!!

Somethings don’t change. A pretty girls is still a pretty girl.

Wow! Google Earth Ancient Rome!!!

I found a reference to “Google Earth Ancient Rome” via Rachel Lucas.

Wow that looks fun!

Here’s a YouTube promotion:

“William Ayers’ forgotten communist manifesto: Prairie Fire”

Here is the link.

You can buy it on Amazon.com.

“At a summit in Brussels, Nicolas Sarkozy said ‘solutions’ would be found for those that had expressed concerns”

Those are words that should give a chill to any European opposed to Marxism/Socialism creeping in under the Green policy – given Europe’s history.

The System That Is America and “Palin is qualified for high office by temperament if not by education, and is preferable to candidates whose education has made no improvement on their characters”

A great line by “Spengler” on Palin at the Asia Times!

The article has much insight on The System That Is America (I am trying out that the phrase of my own), that is often lacking from our own media, establishment elites and my fellow citizens:

All the PhDs and MBAs in the world can’t make a capital market work, but ordinary people like Sarah Palin can. Laws depend on the will of the people to enforce them. It is the initiative of ordinary people that makes America’s political system the world’s most reliable.

America is the heir to a long tradition of Anglo-Saxon law that began with jury trial and the Magna Carta and continued through the English Revolution of the 17th century and the American Revolution of the 18th. Ordinary people like Palin are the bearers of this tradition.

Outside of the United States, the young governor of Alaska has become a figure of ridicule – someone who did not own a passport until last year and who quaintly believes that her state’s proximity to Russia gives her insights on foreign policy. How, my European friends ask, was it possible for such an an ignorant bumpkin to become a candidate for America’s second-highest office? They don’t understand America.

Provincial America depends on the initiative of ordinary people to get through the day. America has something like an Education Ministry, but it has little money to dispense. Americans pay for most of their school costs out of local taxes, and levy those taxes on themselves. In small towns, many public agencies, including fire protection and emergency medical assistance, depend almost entirely on volunteers. People who tax themselves, and give their own time and money for services on which communities depend, are not easily cowed by the federal government or by large corporations.
[…]
Palin really did take on the American oil companies and turn the scoundrels out of office. Her predecessor, Frank Murkowski, appointed her to the state oil and gas commission in the apparent belief that a small-town mayor and former beauty queen would rubber-stamp corrupt deals between the state and the Big Oil companies.

Shades of Jimmy Stewart in Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Palin ran against Murkowski and took his job. That does not qualify her to be president, to be sure, but it does show cunning and strength of character. Palin is qualified for high office by temperament if not by education, and is preferable to candidates whose education has made no improvement on their characters.
[…]
One doesn’t see demonstrations by wronged peasants in the small towns of America. There never were peasants – American farmers always were entrepreneurs – and the locals avenge injury by taking over their local governments, which have sufficient authority to make a difference. At the capillary level, school boards, the Parent Teachers’ Association, self-administered religious organizations and volunteer organizations incubate a political class entirely different from anything to be found in Asia. There are tens of thousands of Sarah Palins lurking in the minor leagues of American politics, and they are the guarantors of market probity.
[…]
The trouble is that rich Asians don’t lend to poor Asians in their own countries. Capital markets don’t work in the developing world because it is too easy to steal money. Subprime mortgages in the US have suffered from poor documentation. What kind of documentation does one encounter in countries where everyone from the clerk at the records office to the secretary who hands you a form requires a small bribe? America is litigious to a fault, but its courts are fair and hard to corrupt.

Asians are reluctant to lend money to each other under the circumstances; they would rather lend money in places where a hockey mom can get involved in local politics and, on encountering graft and corruption, run a successful campaign to turn the scoundrels out. You do not need PhDs and MBAs for that. You need ordinary people who care sufficiently about the places in which they live to take control of their own towns and states when required. And, yes, it doesn’t hurt if they own guns. Popular gun ownership places a limit on the abuse of state power.

I know what side I fall on.

Go get the bastards Jimmy!

“Maybe we should abandon the idea of issuing apologies as if history was a court eternally in session”

Wisdom from the Catholic Church.

The guy who said it: Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi

The Beloit College Mindset list for the Class of 2012…

…has been released here (now with video).

Some of the previous years (2002 through 2011) can be found here.

I noticed there is no mindset list for my graduating year. I may have to make one and/or a personal mindset list. That might make a good “Meme” post.

“5GW Deception Operations And The Soviet Precedent”

Somehow I missed this great post by A.E. at Dreaming 5GW when it came out.

In it he brings out lessons for 5GW from the Soviet experience:

So what lessons can we take from the Soviet example?

– 5GW operations on the operational level will consist of deception operations designed to sow confusion among the enemy, influence decision-making, and undermine the enemy’s unity.

– 5GW organizations will utilize pseudo-operations as a countermeasure against opponents seeking to use penetrate their organizations.

– The perquisites for defense against 5GW are holistic thinking, avoidance of mirror imaging, and a healthy—though skeptical—patriotism.

Read the whole post.

I made a comment but it seems to have been marked as spam :-(.

Here is that comment:

“If it still retains operational secrecy and surprise, the 5GW organization may simply create a dummy front that can be used as a kill vehicle. Once entrapped within the dummy front, enemy operatives can either be misdirected or liquidated. “

I like this idea. I think misdirection might be better then liquidation. Dead bodies might lead to further investigation by the 5GWers adversary.

“The Soviet Union’s main covert strategy involved in use of “Active Measures”—extensive attempts to undermine the West’s unity and influence its decision-making. The battlespace was truly worldwide…”

I think “Active Measures” is a good example of how states can apply 4GW (4gw is more than just evolved guerrilla warfare + info war). It is also a going to be a big carry over to 5GW. There is a book out there from an ex-soviet intel officer called I think “The World Was Going Our Way”. The officer claims that the Soviet active measures where working in turning the third world (and much of the first world) against the US. I think the vibrations of these campaigns are still felt today. Interesting, you could claim that the Soviet “Active Measures” driven 4GW was defeated by the 5gw that Anti-Soviet Western 5GWers created in the form of institutions that continued to oppose the Soviets even as the world turned against them and their own populations lost the stomach for the Cold War.

Another security control the Soviets successfully built in the west is that anybody point out the “Active Measures” would often be dismissed as a (pick your favorite): Right-Winger, John Bircher, McCarthyite, Conspiracy-monger, red-baiter, etc. This fits in quite well with 5GW theory [1].

The Soviets Active Measures were long-term focused, they were not trying to defeat the US/West with one broad stroke. They were willing to try lots of little actions tailored to different groups as needed. That all fits in with my view of one of the essential properties of 5GW [2].

This is a great post. I can’t believe I missed it when it came out.

[1] https://purpleslog.wordpress.com/2006/05/30/5gw-will-hide-in-the-sea-of-conspiracy-theories-to-avoid-discovery/

[2] https://purpleslog.wordpress.com/2006/05/22/boiling-the-frog-5gw-style/

Any other thoughts?

Reference Link: “The pages below show prints I made from processing film I found in old cameras”

This is the link.

Schlitz Beer is Back…and Coming to Milwaukee

I was excited when the classic Schlitz formula was re-introduced.

It is coming back to Milwaukee next week!

From JSOnline:

The original formula for Schlitz beer, which was last widely used over 30 years ago, will soon be available in Milwaukee as part of the effort to revive that once-popular brand.

The beer, which is being marketed as the Schlitz “Classic 1960’s Formula,” will be launched Tuesday in Milwaukee, it was announced today. Pabst Brewing Co., which owns the Schlitz brand, will stage an event at noon at the former Brown Bottle restaurant, now Libiamo Restaurant, 221 W. Galena St. The restaurant is in the heart of Schlitz Park, the office park created out of the former Schlitz brewery.

The Classic Schlitz is sold in six-pack and 12-pack bottles, and carries a more “full-bodied taste,” with a bit more flavoring from hops than Schlitz in cans, which remains unchanged, according to Pabst executives.

Schlitz had been available only in cans for several years until Pabst began selling it in bottles last year in Minneapolis and Tampa, Fla. In April, Pabst began selling bottled Schlitz in Chicago.

“We are proud to bring the beer that made Milwaukee famous back home to the generations of Schlitz lovers who have enjoyed it for years,” said Brad Hittle, chief marketing officer at Schlitz, in a statement.

Following the launch event, the ceremonial first delivery will be made to Libiamo Restaurant. The beer will also be distributed to over 50 other locations in the Milwaukee area. Stops on the delivery tour include: Libiamo, Sobelman’s, Comet Cafe, Wolski’s, Nomad, Y Not II and Ragano’s.

Yeah!

[Corrected] Link: Experiences of an WW1 English Soldier as Blog Entries Time-Shifted 90 years

Here is the link:

This blog is made up of transcripts of Harry Lamin’s letters from the first World War. The letters will be posted exactly 90 years after they were written. To find out Harry’s fate, follow the blog!

Book Notes: Nicholas Wade’s – “Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors”

I bought and finally read Nicholas Wade’s – “Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors” after catching references to it around the blogosphere (e.g. TDAXP)

I loved it.

This book makes an interesting pass at writing down the “pre-history” of humans mostly based upon on genetics and human DNA analysis.

Wade notes the following as the themes driving the book:

– There is a clear continuity between the ape world of 5 million years ago and the human world that emerged from it.

– A principle force in the shaping of human evolution has been the nature of human society.

– The human physical form was attained first, followed by continued evaluation of human behavior.

– Most of human prehistory occurred in, and was shaped by the last ice age.

– The adaptaions for three principal social institutions – warfare, religion, and trade – had evolved by 50,000 years ago.

– The ancestral people had a major limitation to overcome: they were too aggressive to live in settled communities.

– Human evolution did not halt in the distant past but has continued to the present day.

– People probably once spoke a single language from which all contemporary languages are derived.

– The human genome contains excellent records of the recent past, providing a parallel history to the written record.

Everybody should read this book. I am passing my copy onto my family

Website Link: Milwaukee Architecture Photo Archive

Here.

Link: Photo Gallery of the West Milwaukee That Was (Until Recently)

Here.

Here is a photo I have a grain loader (tipped and abandoned) from the same area:

“The OSS Morale Operations Branch in Action, 1943-1945”

Interesting:

The OSS Morale Operations Branch, unlike the U.S. Army or the OWI, practiced covert strategic and tactical morale operations based on deception and subversion. The types of campaigns conducted and the methods used supposedly closely resembled Nazi fifth-column activities of the 1930s and early 1940s. The OSS used whatever means gained results, and its members believed that Nazi psychological warfare had been extremely successful. The belief in the efficacy of Nazi methods indicated how firmly OSS policymakers supported a propaganda of realpolitik in which, as in Nazi Germany, scruples, ethics, and universally accepted agreements and decencies were morally relative if not totally discarded to obtain national goals. As MO output was covert, it could act without fear of damaging America’s reputation or moral standing.
[…]
In the early days rumors were used to disseminate MO propaganda which consisted of simple, brief, concrete, and vivid stories, purporting to come from inside sources concerning familiar persons and events. Successful examples were easy to remember, had a plot, concerned current events, and appealed to emotion and sentiment. Rumors were intended to subvert and deceive, to promote fear, anxiety, confusion, overconfidence, distrust, and panic. Once created and cleared by the OSS and PWE, up to twenty rumors were disseminated each week by agent, radio, and leaflet and through plants in enemy and neutral newspapers. Success was gauged by a “comeback,” or mention of the rumor ill the foreign, neutral, or Allied press or by Allied or enemy intelligence services. According to OSS tallies of comebacks, rumors were extraordinarily effective.
[…]
Forged documents, letters, and poison-pen letters were MO staples and were used to create dissatisfaction, anxiety, and confusion, to intimidate collaborators, to terrorize soldiers and civilians, and to harass the Gestapo. In one operation, based on the 1944 capture of Generalmajor Karl Kreipe by British commandos, MO hoped to convince enemy soldiers that their officers were surrendering to save themselves.
[…]
The Sauerkraut and Ravioli missions exemplified perfectly the willingness of the OSS leadership to use whatever means were necessary to defeat the Nazis since these operations were in violation of the 1929 Geneva Convention and the U.S. Army Rules of Land Warfare, both of which applied to the OSS. William Casey was a major proponent of using expendable POWs for MO work and for equally dangerous SO and SI missions. He assured OSS member J. Russell Forgan of the full cooperation of the U.S. Army’s provost marshal’s office, which had guaranteed the OSS an unending supply of POWs. 30 The idea of using POWs, partisans, and Allied agents for OSS work spread to Northwest Europe after D-Day. The most famous infiltration teams there were commanded by Maj. Paul Mellon, a relative of OSS leader David Bruce and heir to the Mellon family fortune, and Maj. Stacey Lloyd; both men were U.S. Army officers attached to the OSS. MO field teams operated in France after August 1944 and initially consisted entirely of Americans divided into three teams of eight officers, seven enlisted mew and six civilians. One team was eventually attached to each army of the Twelfth Army Group. The teams conducted sixty operations behind the lines, disseminating rumors, leaflets, stickers, stencils, and forged letters in mailboxes, under the doors of dwellings, in railroad cars and stations, in taverns, and by word of mouth.
[…]
Forgeries were always a staple of OSS black propaganda. MO developed postage stamps bearing the likeness of Himmler rather than Hitler, to give Germans the impression that der Fuhrer had been ousted in a secret coup d’etat. In conjunction with PWE, MO produced counterfeit ration cards and forged civil certificates, forms, vouchers, military travel orders, and sick leave and furlough passes. The OSS Planning Group even considered counterfeiting German currency to destroy the Reich’s economy. In another plan, to increase the likelihood of troops picking up MO material, it was suggested that propaganda be printed on the back of counterfeit banknotes or that special offers of rations or privileges be guaranteed to a person bearing the note when surrendering. 36 In cooperation with the OSS R&D Branch and Britain’s PWE, MO developed a variety of unusual gadgets intended to lower morale, such as the exploding ink pen. At one point, Jack Daniels suggested producing ammunition in enemy calibers that contained high explosives rather than smokeless powder, which could then be smuggled into the Wehrmacht supply system. When the device was fired, the resulting explosion would destroy both weapon and owner
[…]
It is difficult to assess the effectiveness of OSS Morale Operations accurately. The relatively small scale of branch activities, when compared with propaganda campaigns carried out by the U.S. Army and the OWI and with the United Nations’ conventional warfare efforts, seems insignificant. MO, unlike the army, lacked the personnel to conduct major postwar studies, and few surveys were completed describing the number of Germans who were exposed to or influenced by MO work.

Is there a comprehensive History of the OSS available?