I got to know the guy who co-wrote this classic text, mike aquino, to some extent, because I briefly attached myself to his 'temple of set.' I wasn't terribly impressed : he's nothing like as sophisticated as the aleister crowley people are - but he does bring out a lot of practical aspects of psywar just by being a 'setian.' Most of his memoirs are on his personal web page, including "from psyops to mindwar":

http://www.xeper.org/maquino/

The fact that aquino was able to exploit the freedom of religion provisions to ensure that setian (and church of satan) 'chaplains' should be available within the US armed forces to any soldier who wishes to consult them is entertaining, but it isn't the fundamental point, which is much simpler and much more subversive : the basis of psywar is convincing the other guy that YOU - not HIM - are 'evil.' That is, if you want to frighten your opponent, painting yourself as 'good' and him as 'evil' is not the way to go.

People may recall the madman theory in nuclear deterrence : Reagan, or Nixon, or whoever it was, was counseled to give the soviets the impression that he was irrational, slightly nuts, liable to flip and press the button, and needed to be handled with kid gloves. The problem here is that, while giving your opponent the impression that you are 'evil,' you have to try to give your own public, and the world public insofar as it is already predisposed to support you, the idea that you are 'the good guy.' So the finesse of this is delineating two psychological realms, in one of which (the 'friendly' realm) you paint yourself as 'good,' while in the other (the 'hostile' realm) you paint yourself as 'evil.'

You won't find this in Aquino and Vallely - it's just my own inference, so that you can see how easy the basic ideas of psywar are, once you have overcome naive moral realism. Nor do I mean to suggest that Vallely is or ever was involved in satanism (or 'setianism') - he would probably be more interesting if he had been. The scariest people of all, in the sense of naive moral realism, are the jesus freaks in the air force, anyway.

I think he was the "Captain Nemo" type figure in "Illuminatus", a trilogy of wanky science fiction by ex Playboy writers that did much to corrupt a generation. The fact that I even remember it - along with my remarks about Satanists, Setians, and Crowleyans on the next thread - should show how 'libertarianism' actually impacted me, in the 1970s and 1980s : via occultism. If anyone is curious about what the occult scene was really like in those days, they can't do better than to read this absolutely sweet, poignant memorial, "The Doom That Came To Chelsea," by Alan Cabal (probably not his real name, but I am proud to say that he, or someone using the same name, occasionally sends comments to my blog):

http://www.nypress.com/16/23/news&columns/feature.cfm

Prove me wrong, dudes. I'm in no mood for trifling right now, because (a) HuffPost have a picture of John and Cindy McCain giving royal family type waves from the beer jet, and they both look to me like ALIENS, obviously goddam LIZARDS from ZETA RETICULI, and (b) I can't blog it because WordPress seems to be down.

It is quite easy to show that the net effect of libertarian agitation is to drain supporters from the anti-McCain camp into various quixotic alternative campaigns. If you want to offer a mirror image proposition, you could try saying something about Nader supporters, because the same logic certainly does apply to them. But, I wasn't talking about 'card carrying membership' of anything.

That reminds me, though : I do not understand why they have 'open primaries', in which members of opposing parties can vote to tactically split their opponent's campaigns, as in the recent Limbaugh "operation chaos." Why do these 'open primaries' even exist??

wikipedia offer much argument for it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_primary

This is always an inaccurate assumption, but it always good rhetorical strategy to make it, so that when someone like you calls me on it, I can explain : if they were 'rational actors' (which of course in reality they are not, since just like you and me, they are enslaved by emotion, much of it carefully induced by psywar experts, ha, ha), but if they WERE, then one could save oneself time and mental attrition by enquiring solely into the objectively likely effects of their statements.

p.s. I know I'm being horrible this morning (UK time) ; it is a side effect of having had to wade through all the ad hominem stuff, plus a few personal factors, like loneliness, extreme poverty, unemployment, political and personal despair, gathering gloom, incipient world war, and the fact that even the most attractive Israelis - or maybe, especially the most attractive Israelis - seem to be looking forward to it.

oh, well, for sure I shall keep going. I immunised myself in advance when I was younger by going through a complete, no holds barred process of destitution, modelled on that described by George Orwell in "Down and Out in Paris and London." I even stayed in the same hostel for the homeless that he stayed in, in Tooley Street, near Waterloo railway station, where everyone is a practicing alcoholic. But I would hate to lose my Internet connection, since it is my only link to humanity.