The map is not the territory....

...and in this case it's not even the same freaking planet.

On Sunday, Syrian state run TV news ran a segment explaining how the onfield formation and passing attack of the current world-dominant Barcelona soccer team serve as coded instructions to the rebels who are running weapons into Syria, highlighting smuggling routes and final delivery destinations. You can watch it on youtube here.

The story starts 30+ seconds in, but you need to stay on board until the graphics arrive at the one-minute mark.

You can find a US news site covering the story here.

I'm not sure whether this could be a subject for Robin Laws' occasional  Ripped from the Headlines blogs. Sure, it could be done, if you can stomach using the Syrian bloodbath's whackjob accompaniment as inspiration for gaming.

There are suspicions that the explanation for the story is whacky-ass humor instead of whacky-pack paranoia. I guess that would be 'nice.' I'm hoping that the story should be filed under the Arabic word for 'the Onion.' But Syria seems like the type of place that being forced to explain your joke about national security could have bad consequences, so I'd be content not to know.