Propaganda has become an art on its own...Soon to be taught at universities to special students who are good at lying, deceiving, cheating, sweet-talking, etc...
How War Propaganda Keeps on Killing
Global Research, December 08, 2016
Consortiumnews 7 December 2016
A key reason why American foreign debacles have been particularly
destructive mostly to the countries attacked but also to the United
States is that these interventions are always accompanied by major U.S.
government investments in propaganda. So, even when officials recognize a
misjudgment has been made, the propaganda machinery continues to grind
on to prevent a timely reversal.
In effect, Official Washington gets trapped by its own propaganda,
which restricts the government’s ability to change direction even when
the need for a shift becomes obvious.
After all, once a foreign leader is demonized, it’s hard for a U.S.
official to explain that the leader may not be all that bad or is at
least better than the likely alternative. So, it’s not just that
officials start believing their own propaganda, it’s that the propaganda
takes on a life of its own and keeps the failed policy churning
forward.
It’s a bit like the old story of the chicken that continues to run
around with its head cut off. In the case of the U.S. government, the
pro-war or pro-intervention “group think” continues to run amok even
after wiser policymakers recognize the imperative to change course.
The reason for that dilemma is that so much money gets spread around
to pay for the propaganda and so many careers are tethered to the
storyline that it’s easier to let thousands of U.S. soldiers and foreign
citizens die than to admit that the policy was built on distortions,
propaganda and lies. That would be bad for one’s career.
And, because of the lag time required for contracts to be issued and
the money to flow into the propaganda shops, the public case for the
policy can outlive the belief that the policy makes sense.
Need for Skeptics
Ideally, in a healthy democracy, skeptics both within the government
and in the news media would play a key role in pointing out the flaws
and weaknesses in the rationale for a conflict and would be rewarded for
helping the leaders veer away from disaster. However, in the current
U.S. establishment, such self-corrections don’t occur.
A current example of this phenomenon is the promotion of the New Cold
War with Russia with almost no thoughtful debate about the reasons for
this growing hostility or its possible results, which include potential
thermonuclear war that could end life on the planet.
Instead of engaging in a thorough discussion, the U.S. government and
mainstream media have simply flooded the policymaking process with
propaganda, some of it so crude that it would have embarrassed Joe
McCarthy and the Old Cold Warriors.
Everything that Russia does is put in the most negative light with no
space allowed for a rational examination of facts and motivations –
except at a few independent-minded Internet sites.
Yet, as part of the effort to marginalize dissent about the New Cold
War, the U.S. government, some of its related “non-governmental
organizations,” mainstream media outlets, and large technology companies
are now pushing a censorship project designed to silence the few Internet sites that have refused to march in lockstep.
I suppose that if one considers the trillions of dollars in tax
dollars that the Military Industrial Complex stands to get from the New
Cold War, the propaganda investment in shutting up a few critics is well
worth it.
Today, this extraordinary censorship operation is being carried out
under the banner of fighting “fake news.” But many of the targeted Web
sites, including Consortiumnews.com, have represented some of the most
responsible journalism on the Internet.
At Consortiumnews, our stories are consistently well-reported and
well-documented, but we do show skepticism toward propaganda from the
U.S. government or anywhere else.
For instance, Consortiumnews not only challenged President George W.
Bush’s WMD claims regarding Iraq in 2002-2003 but we have reported on
the dispute within the U.S. intelligence community about claims made by
President Barack Obama and his senior aides regarding the 2013 sarin gas
attack in Syria and the 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
over Ukraine.
In those two latter cases, Official Washington exploited the
incidents as propaganda weapons to justify an escalation of tensions
against the Syrian and Russian governments, much as the earlier Iraqi
WMD claims were used to rally the American people to invade Iraq.
However, if you question the Official Story about who was responsible
for the sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013, after
President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and the mainstream media
pronounced the Syrian government guilty, you are guilty of “fake news.”
Facts Don’t Matter
It doesn’t seem to matter that it’s been confirmed in a mainstream report by The Atlantic that
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper advised President Obama
that there was no “slam-dunk” evidence proving that the Syrian
government was responsible. Nor does it matter that legendary
investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has reported that his intelligence sources say the more likely culprit was Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front with help from Turkish intelligence.
By straying from the mainstream “group think” that accuses Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad of crossing Obama’s “red line” on chemical
weapons, you are opening yourself to retaliation as a “fake news” site.
Similarly, if you point out that the MH-17 investigation was put
under the control of Ukraine’s unsavory SBU intelligence service, which
not only has been accused by United Nations investigators of concealing
torture but also has a mandate to protect Ukrainian government secrets,
you also stand accused of disseminating “fake news.”
Apparently one of the factors that got Consortiumnews included on a
new “black list” of some 200 Web sites was that I skeptically analyzed a
report by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) that while supposedly
“Dutch-led” was really run by the SBU. I also noted that the JIT’s
conclusion blaming Russia was marred by a selective reading of the SBU-supplied evidence and by an illogical narrative.
But the mainstream U.S. media uncritically hailed the JIT report, so to
point out its glaring flaws made us guilty of committing “fake news” or
disseminating “Russian propaganda.”
The Iraq-WMD Case
Presumably, if the hysteria about “fake news” had been raging in
2002-2003, then those of us who expressed skepticism about Iraq hiding
WMD would have been forced to carry a special marking declaring us to be
“Saddam apologists.”
Back then, everyone who was “important” in Washington had no doubt
about Iraq’s WMD. Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt
repeatedly stated the “fact” of Iraq’s hidden WMD as flat fact and
mocked anyone who doubted the “group think.”
Yet, even after the U.S. government acknowledged that the WMD
allegations were a myth – a classic and bloody case of “fake news” –
almost no one who had pushed the fabrication was punished.
So, the “fake news” stigma didn’t apply to Hiatt and other mainstream
journalists who actually did produce “fake news,” even though it led to
the deaths of 4,500 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
To this day, Hiatt remains the Post’s editorial-page editor continuing
to enforce “conventional wisdoms” and to disparage those who deviate.
Another painful example of letting propaganda – rather than facts and
reason – guide U.S. foreign policy was the Vietnam War, which claimed
the lives of some 58,000 U.S. soldiers and millions of Vietnamese.
The Vietnam War raged on for years after Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara and even President Lyndon Johnson recognized the need to end
it. Part of that was Richard Nixon’s treachery in going behind Johnson’s back to
sabotage peace talks in 1968, but the smearing of anti-war dissidents
as pro-communist traitors locked many officials into support for the war
well after its futility became obvious. The propaganda developed its
own momentum that resulted in many unnecessary deaths.
A Special Marking
In the Internet era, there will now be new-age forms of censorship.
Your Web site will be excluded from major search engines or
electronically stamped with a warning about your unreliability.
Your guilt will be judged by a panel of mainstream media outlets, including some partially funded by the U.S. government, or maybe by some anonymous group of alleged experts.
With the tens of millions of dollars now sloshing around Official
Washington to pay for propaganda, lots of entrepreneurs will be lining
up at the trough to do their part. Congress just approved another $160
million to combat “Russian propaganda,” which will apparently include
U.S. news sites that question the case for the New Cold War.
Along with that money, the House voted 390-30 for the Intelligence Authorization Act with a Section 501 to
create an Executive Branch “interagency committee to counter active
measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence,” an
invitation to expand the McCarthyistic witch hunt already underway to
intimidate independent Internet news sites and independent-minded
Americans who question the latest round of U.S. government propaganda.
Even if a President Trump decides that these tensions with Russia are
absurd and that the two countries can work together in the fight
against terrorism and other international concerns, the financing of the
New Cold War propaganda — and the pressure to conform to Official
Washington’s “group think” — will continue.
The well-funded drumbeat of anti-Russian propaganda will seek to
limit Trump’s decision-making. After all, this New Cold War cash cow can
be milked for years to come and nothing – not even the survival of the
human species – is more important than that.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many
of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the
1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either
in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Washington Post admits article on ‘Russian propaganda’ & ‘fake news’ based on sham research
RT : 8 Dec, 2016
Facing threats of legal action, the Washington Post has been
forced to add an editor’s note distancing the paper from a dubious
website, PropOrNot, which it had initially endorsed as a group of
nonpartisan experts on “Russian propaganda.”
The Post came under fire on social media for its provocative hit piece which claimed that “Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda campaign” actually influenced the US presidential election.
The article, published late last month, referenced “independent researchers” who allegedly determined that Russian state media, RT and Sputnik News among them, produced “misleading
articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton,
helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American
democracy."
One of the main sources cited by the Post was PropOrNot, “an independent team of concerned American citizens” who, according to the site’s description, are “volunteering time and skills to identify propaganda – particularly Russian propaganda – targeting a US audience.”
After
the publication of its evidence-free article, the newspaper was sent a
letter from one of the websites listed, threatening a defamation
lawsuit.
“We have another post today that describes how the few things
that are verifiable on the PropOrNot site don’t pan out, as in the
organization is not simply a group of inept propagandists but also
appears to deal solely in fabrications,” Naked Capitalism – a US blog on finance, economics and politics – said on its website.
“If
the site is flagrantly false with respect to things that can be
checked, why pray tell did the Washington Post and its fellow useful
idiots in the mainstream media validate and amplify its message? Strong
claims demand strong proofs, yet the Post appeared content to give a
megaphone to people who make stuff up with abandon. No wonder the
members of PropOrNot hide as much as they can about what they are up to;
more transparency would expose their work to be a tissue of lies.”
Jim Moody, an attorney representing the website, stressed in a letter to the Washington Post on Sunday that the newspaper
“did not provide even a single example of ‘fake news’ allegedly
distributed or promoted by Naked Capitalism or indeed any of the 200
sites on the PropOrNot blacklist.”
Award-winning journalist
Glenn Greenwald, significant in bringing Edward Snowden’s US security
revelations to the public, labeled the Post story“total journalistic garbage.”
“More
troubling still, PropOrNot listed numerous organizations on its website
as ‘allied’ with it, yet many of these claimed ‘allies’ told The
Intercept, and complained on social media, they have nothing to do with
the group and had never even heard of it before the Post published its
story,” Greenwald wrote in response to the article.
In his article, the Post’s Craig Timberg did not initially include a link to PropOrNot’s website. “If
readers had the opportunity to visit the site, it would have become
instantly apparent that this group of ostensible experts far more
resembles amateur peddlers of primitive, shallow propagandistic clichés
than serious, substantive analysis and expertise; that it has a blatant,
demonstrable bias in promoting NATO’s narrative about the world; and
that it is engaging in extremely dubious McCarthyite tactics about a
wide range of critics and dissenters,” Greenwald noted.
Following a storm of negative comments on social media, with many accusing the newspaper of “crazy lies,” saying the Post is actually the “real propaganda peddler,” the dubious article was appended.
“The
Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets
of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda
efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was
PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a
report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly
or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those
sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of
the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged
the group’s methodology and conclusions.
The Post, which
did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of
PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the
article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story,
PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list,” the paper said.
Less
than a week after the Post published the article, the US House of
Representatives passed an intelligence authorization bill containing a
provision aimed at tackling what Washington claims is political
interference by Russia on a global level.
The 93-page HR 6393
– passed by the House in a 390-30 vote on November 30 – calls for the
establishment of a new, interagency panel designed to suppress Russia's
alleged attempts to "exert covert influence over peoples and governments.”
The panel would be tasked with "countering active measures by Russia to
exert covert influence, including exposing falsehoods, agents of
influence, corruption, human rights abuses, terrorism and assassinations
carried out by the security services or political elites of the Russian
Federation or their proxies,” the draft legislation goes on to say.
