In his controversial new book, Nick Davies argues that shadowy intelligence agencies are pumping out black propaganda to manipulate public opinion – and that the media simply swallow it wholesale
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There is very good reason to believe that that letter was a fake – and a significant one because there is equally good reason to believe that it was one product among many from a new machinery of propaganda which has been created by the United States and its allies since the terrorist attacks of September 2001.
For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.
The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. I’ve spent the last two years researching a book about falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.
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But clearly a great deal of this carries the fingerprints of officialdom. The Pentagon has now designated “information operations” as its fifth “core competency” alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own “psyop” element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department’s campaign of “public diplomacy” which includes funding radio stations and news websites. In Britain, the Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defence works with specialists from 15 UK psyops, based at the Defence Intelligence and Security School at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.
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Ultimately, the US has run into trouble with its propaganda in Iraq, particularly with its use of the Zarqawi story. In May 2006, when yet another of his alleged letters was handed out to reporters in the Combined Press Information Centre in Baghdad, finally it was widely regarded as suspect and ignored by just about every single media outlet.
Arguably, even worse than this loss of credibility, according to British defence sources, the US campaign on Zarqawi eventually succeeded in creating its own reality. By elevating him from his position as one fighter among a mass of conflicting groups, the US campaign to “villainise Zarqawi” glamorised him with its enemy audience, making it easier for him to raise funds, to attract “unsponsored” foreign fighters, to make alliances with Sunni Iraqis and to score huge impact with his own media manoeuvres. Finally, in December 2004, Osama bin Laden gave in to this constructed reality, buried his differences with the Jordanian and declared him the leader of al-Q’aida’s resistance to the American occupation.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/how-the-spooks-took-over-%20the-news-780672.html
2. “What Is Patrick Fitzgerald Trying to Hide from the Public?
Powerful prosecutor and public figure Patrick Fitzgerald has been waging a chilling private jihad aimed at “killing” a book critical of him.
Okay, so he’s one of the “sexiest men alive” — but what does Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney in Chicago and Special Counsel in the CIA leak case, have against us poor, unsexy journalists? It’s bad enough that Fitzie won’t answer my questions: (“Rory. I just wanted to get back to you and let you know that I am going to decline to be interviewed. Thank you. Pat”) It’s worse that he was responsible for the jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who spent 85 days behind bars. Now comes word that Fitzgerald, who must have too much time on his hands now that Scooter Libby has been freed and Rod Blagojevich indicted, spent much of the last year and a half going after another journalist, Peter Lance, in an attempt to kill a new edition of Lance’s investigative book Triple Cross by threatening to sue both the author and his publisher for libel.
Originally published in November 2006 by Regan Books, a division of Harper_Collins, Triple Cross uncovers the story of how Al Qaeda master spy Ali Mohamed infiltrated U.S. intelligence in the years leading up to 9/11 – “and how the FBI’s elite bin Laden squad failed to stop him.” Among the radicals trained by Ali Mohamed –and photographed by the FBI in 1989 — one would go on to kill Rabbi Meier Kahane in 1990; three were convicted in the World Trade Center bombing in 1994; and two (including Kahane’s killer) were later convicted by then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald in 1995 in what became known as the “Day of Terror” plot to blow up the bridges and tunnels into Manhattan. The book also details how the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s offices in New York prosecuted terrorists before 9/11, including “Blind Sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman, who infamously tried to blow up the World Trade Center, and others who bombed US embassies in Africa. And Lance alleges that Fitzgerald, when he was an assistant U.S. attorney in the 1990s, discounted information that may have revealed the existence of an Al Qaeda cell in New York years prior to September 11, 2001.
Fitzgerald’s stab at censorship is especially chilling coming from such a powerful prosecutor. But the lawman says he has no choice, since the book, which focuses on cases Fitzgerald prosecuted as Chief of Organized Crime and Terrorism in the Southern District of New York, is “a deliberate lie masquerading as the truth” and maintains that “it defames me or casts me in a false light,” as he said in one of four threatening letters sent to Lance’s publisher.
Although he wouldn’t speak to me, Fitzgerald did tell the Associated Press that the charges in Triple Cross far surpass normal criticism, which “goes with the territory” for public figures such as United States Attorneys. “This is different,” Fitzgerald contended. “The book lied about the facts and alleged that I deliberately misled the courts and the public in ways that in part caused the deaths in the 1998 embassy bombing attacks and in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.” Fitzgerald told the AP he decided to protest because “it is outrageous to falsely accuse me of causing those deaths corruptly.”
Although undoubtedly a public figure, Fitzgerald has been waging a private jihad to get Lance’s book killed. He has written repeatedly to HarperCollins – owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. – demanding it “cease publication” and “withdraw” copies of Triple Cross, which was originally published in hard cover in 2006. His first letter to the publisher alleged that “Triple Cross makes a number of statements of fact which defame me (and others) and which are easily proven to be objectively false.” He asked the publisher to stop selling all hard cover copies, not to print a new paperback edition, and to acknowledge errors. His most recent letter arrived June 2. “To put it plain and simple,” Fitzgerald wrote, “if in fact you publish the book this month and it defames me or casts me in a false light, HarperCollins will be sued.”
http://www.alternet.org/media/140613/what_is_patrick_fitzgerald_trying_to_hide_from_the_public/
3. “Japan’s Embrace of a Phony War on Terror
In Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, Gavan McCormack demonstrates how Japan’s apparent nationalist turn owes much to the need to conceal the country’s increasing subordination to American imperial designs. However, a closer examination of the driving forces behind the US Empire in the 21st century suggests that both countries may be serving a quite different agenda.
Rightly described as a “masterful” analysis by fellow Japan expert Chalmers Johnson, McCormack’s 2007 book expertly documents how Japan’s postwar “peace constitution” has been steadily attenuated to the point of meaninglessness, as Tokyo has consistently bowed to pressure from Washington to become more active in its support of US hegemony, culminating in a “merger” of their military forces in the wake of 9/11.
McCormack claims that this is “an agenda heavily in the American, rather than the Japanese national interest.”
http://original.antiwar.com/cathail/2009/06/12/japans-embrace-of-a-phony-war-on-terror/
4. “Getting to the Truth About World War II
President Barack Obama’s visit to Normandy to commemorate the 65th anniversary of D-Day makes us think about the entire course of World War II, and the lingering propaganda or myths that still becloud it.
As a former instructor of military history and lover of history, let me address four of these myths that are particularly annoying and misleading:
First, France’s army did not simply surrender or run away in 1940, as ignorant American Know-Nothing conservatives claim.
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Britain’s well-trained expeditionary force in France was beaten just as quickly and thoroughly as the French, and saved itself only by abandoning its French allies and fleeing across the Channel.
No army in the world at that time could have withstood Germany’s blitzkrieg, planned by the brilliant Erich von Manstein, and led by the audacious Heinz Guderian, and Erwin Rommel – three of modern history’s greatest generals.
They were also incredibly lucky. Just one bomb on a German bridge over the Meuse, or one impassable traffic jam in the Ardennes forest could have meant the difference between victory and defeat. The French had temporarily moved some of their weakest reserve units just into the sector the Germans struck. It was, as Wellington said after Waterloo, a damned close run thing.
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Second, the forts of France’s Maginot Line were not tactically outflanked, as myth has it. The Germans struck NW of the Line’s end, through the Belgian/French Ardennes Forest, a route anticipated by the French Army which held war games there in 1939. The immobile French field army failed, not the Maginot Line. It may have been too costly, tied down too many men, and came to symbolize France’s defensive attitude, but the Great Wall of France fulfilled its designated mission.
The Line was intended to only defend the coal and steel industries of Alsace and Lorraine, which it did.
The Germans concluded an attack on the Line would be too costly, and opted for a different route – through Belgium.
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The crews of the unconquered Maginot forts held out until the armistice. Those who mock France for building forts that were supposedly “outflanked” should know the “impregnable” modern US fortifications at Manila, and Britain’s Fortress Singapore, were both taken from the rear by the Imperial Japanese Army. Germany’s much-vaunted “Westwall” and coastal defenses fared no better.
Third – Germany’s Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe were crushed well before D-Day. In commemorating the war, we must remember to salute the courage and valor of Russia’s dauntless soldiers and pilots who, like German soldiers, fought magnificently albeit for criminal regimes. World War II in Europe was not won just at D-Day, as popular myth has it. Germany’s army and air force were broken on the Eastern Front’s titanic battles.
The numbers speak for themselves. The Soviets destroyed 75–80% of all German divisions – 4 million soldiers – and most of the Luftwaffe. Russia lost at least 14 million soldiers and a similar number of civilians. The Red Army destroyed 507 Axis divisions. On the Western Front after D-Day, the Allies destroyed 176 badly under-strength German divisions.
When the Allies landed in Normandy, they met battered German forces with no air cover, crippled by lack of fuel and supplies, unable to move in daytime. Even so, the Germans fought like tigers. Had the invading US, British and Canadians encountered the 1940’s Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, the outcome may well have been different.
Fourth – World War II was not a good and evil struggle between “western democracies” and “totalitarian powers,” as we are still wrongly taught.
It was a world conflict over land and resources pitting the British Empire which controlled 25% of the entire globe, the French Empire, Dutch Empire, and Belgian Empire, and, later, the US imperium (Philippines, Pacific possessions, Cuba, Central America), against the Italian and Japanese empires. The Soviet Union was an empire unto itself. “
http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis150.html
5. May?
“Privacy May Be a Victim in Cyberdefense Plan
A plan to create a new Pentagon cybercommand is raising significant privacy and diplomatic concerns, as the Obama administration moves ahead on efforts to protect the nation from cyberattack and to prepare for possible offensive operations against adversaries’ computer networks.
President Obama has said that the new cyberdefense strategy he unveiled last month will provide protections for personal privacy and civil liberties. But senior Pentagon and military officials say that Mr. Obama’s assurances may be challenging to guarantee in practice, particularly in trying to monitor the thousands of daily attacks on security systems in the United States that have set off a race to develop better cyberweapons.
Much of the new military command’s work is expected to be carried out by the National Security Agency, whose role in intercepting the domestic end of international calls and e-mail messages after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, under secret orders issued by the Bush administration, has already generated intense controversy.
There is simply no way, the officials say, to effectively conduct computer operations without entering networks inside the United States, where the military is prohibited from operating, or traveling electronic paths through countries that are not themselves American targets.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/us/politics/13cyber.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
6. “Stealing the Iranian Election
Top Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen…
I am aware of the difficulties of catching history on the run. Some explanation may emerge for Ahmadinejad’s upset that does not involve fraud. For instance, it is possible that he has gotten the credit for spreading around a lot of oil money in the form of favors to his constituencies, but somehow managed to escape the blame for the resultant high inflation.
But just as a first reaction, this post-election situation looks to me like a crime scene. And here is how I would reconstruct the crime.”
7. “The REAL Holocaust Deniers Are Those Who Accept the Government’s Version of 9/11A reader named Patrick made a very insightful comment about the propaganda effort to link 9/11 truth activists with holocaust deniers (edited for readability):
Glenn Beck – while no more than a good telepromt reader – as opposed to reporter or commentator, made some disturbing parallels between the 9/11 truth movement and a crazed gunman. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have found, in my experience, that 9/11 truth members are polite, courteous, and friendly. They want nothing more than a criminal investigation of the events of 9/11.
Beck labels many as unpatriotic for not going along with the status quo. As if our government can do no wrong. It goes along with the notion that no one needs to be blamed for anything.
A form of bias that is, in fact, most common is uncritical patriotism, which leads people to believe that their political leaders never knowingly do anything terribly evil. One example is the fact that although credible reports about the genocide against Jews being perpetrated by the Nazis were circulating within Germany in the 40s, many Germans refused to believe the stories, holding that the leaders of their highly civilized nation could not commit such atrocities. Indeed, these Germans were the original ‘Holocaust deniers’.
In the 9/11 case, it is acknowledged that a national government committed a heinous crime; in the other case, the claim that a national government committed a heinous crime is denied. The true parallel with Americans who accuse the Bush administration of complicity in the 9/11 attacks is, therefore, with those German citizens who accused the Nazi leaders of conspiring to commit genocide. And the true parallel with the original Holocaust deniers would be with those Americans who deny their government’s responsibility for 9/11.
As Jon Gold, a Jewish 9/11 activist, wrote last year:
How many times have you seen someone try to compare [the 9/11 truth] movement to “Holocaust Revisionists” (Holocaust Deniers)? I’ve seen it too many times to count…
None of us deny that 2,973 people were brutally murdered on 9/11. We deny the bogus story we were told about how and why it happened…
The individuals that try and connect the 9/11 Truth Movement with “Holocaust Deniers” are essentially trying to rationalize, justify, protect, and defend the polices of the Bush Regime.
Sound familiar?
If I were to compare the 9/11 Truth Movement to anything, it would be to the White Rose.
According to Wikipedia, the White Rose “was a non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of a number of students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor. The group became known for an anonymous leaflet campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943, that called for active opposition to German dictator Adolf Hitler’s regime.” [...] “Today, the members of the White Rose are honoured in Germany as some of its greatest heroes because they opposed the Third Reich ….”
And see this.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/06/real-holocaust-deniers-are-those-who.html
8. “The soldier blood on Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham’s hands
A fairly reliable rule of thumb in our political debates is that those who most frequently invoke The Troops to justify their policy views are the ones who care least about the troops, who see them as nothing but props to exploit for political manipulation. For the last week, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham have been running around accusing anyone who opposes their photo suppression amendment of indifference to the lives of the Troops based on their claim that top military officials and the Commander-in-Chief say that release of the photos will aid Al Qaeda recruitment and inflame anti-American sentiment.
But yesterday, the very same Joe Lieberman announced that he wants Guantanamo to remain opened. Lieberman apparently doesn’t care that top military officials — including Gen. David Petraeus and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen — have warned that Guantanamo aids Al Qaeda recruitment and makes us less safe, and our Commander-in-Chief has said the same. Identically, the torture techniques which both Lieberman and Graham long supported are also, according to military officials and the Commander-in-Chief himself, major recruiting tools for Terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, people like Lieberman, Graham and their like-minded friends who support Guantanamo clearly have massive amounts of American solider blood on their hands:
Former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora. . . blasted the Bush administration’s abusive detention practices as leading to the recruitment of new radicals and the deaths of more American soldiers: ”[T]here are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq — as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat — are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.”
Admiral Mullen said the same thing:
Well, the concern I’ve had about Guantanamo in these wars is it has been a symbol — and one which has been a recruiting symbol for those extremists and jihadists who would fight us. … That’s at the heart of the concern for Guantanamo’s continued existence
Yet Lieberman, Graham, virtually every Republican member of Congress and scores of Democrats want to keep Guantanamo opened and continue these interrogation techniques — and thereby hand Al Qaeda a major recruitment tool — because they are obviously indifferent to the lives of The Troops. To borrow Lindsey Graham’s language from his Thursday night appearance on Fox News regarding the release of torture photos: the policies Lieberman, Graham and their comrades advocate are tantamount to providing bullets and IEDs directly to Islamic extremists in order to slaughter American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. What kind of moral monsters would knowingly advocate policies — such as keeping Guantanamo opened and using “enhanced interrogation techniques” — which our top military leaders and the Commander-in-Chief have clearly stated will help America’s enemies and directly result in the deaths of the brave American men and women serving overseas (and that’s to say nothing of their support for a totally unnecessary war that sent more than 4,000 American soldiers — and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis — to their deaths)?
And how shabby and inane must our political discourse be for it to allow the very same people who have most aided anti-American sentiment and Al Qaeda recruitment efforts — people like Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham — to wrap themselves in language about the lives of the Troops and the imperatives of following the dictates of military leaders, when, as the statements of top military leaders and their own rhetorical formula prove, nobody has more American soldier blood on their hands than they do? These are the very same people who constantly advocate policies that our military leaders and Commander-in-Chief have warned directly endanger America’s security and the lives of the troops. Shouldn’t the most minimal standards of political debate prevent them from parading around as guardians of the lives of American troops and reverent followers of the pronouncements of military leaders?”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
9. “Expert Advice On Dealing With A Prior Administration’s Use of Torture
By John W. Dean”
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22814.htm
