Propaganda

Obama’s Propagandistic UN Address

September 28, 2014 Robert Parry, www.consortiumnews/org Educate! Propaganda, Syria, Ukraine, Wars and Militarism

An honest person would have described all these events very differently, including what “America stands for.” There could have been at least some acknowledgement of how the United States in the post-World War II era has often relied on “the barrel of a gun” – or cruise missiles and smart bombs – to impose its will on other countries, including “regime change” in Iraq in 2003 and in Libya in 2011. Obama could have acknowledged, too, that the United States has often used coups d’etat to unseat governments not to its liking, even when the leaders have been popularly elected. A partial list would include Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Allende in Chile in 1973, Aristide in Haiti twice, Chavez in Venezuela briefly in 2002, Zelaya in Honduras in 2009, Morsi in Egypt in 2013, and now Yanukovych in Ukraine in 2014. But instead Obama chose to present a simplistic, propagandistic version of what has transpired in Ukraine.

Chris Hedges: Why Israel Lies

August 5, 2014 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Chris Hedges, Israel, Palestine, Propaganda

All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, including Israel and Hamas. But Israel engages in the kinds of jaw-dropping lies that characterize despotic and totalitarian regimes. It does not deform the truth; it inverts it. It routinely paints a picture for the outside world that is diametrically opposed to reality. And all of us reporters who have covered the occupied territories have run into Israel’s Alice-in-Wonderland narratives, which we dutifully insert into our stories—required under the rules of American journalism—although we know they are untrue. I saw small boys baited and killed by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Younis. The soldiers swore at the boys in Arabic over the loudspeakers of their armored jeep. The boys, about 10 years old, then threw stones at an Israeli vehicle and the soldiers opened fire, killing some, wounding others. I was present more than once as Israeli troops drew out and shot Palestinian children in this way. Such incidents, in the Israeli lexicon, become children caught in crossfire. I was in Gaza when F-16 attack jets dropped 1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs on overcrowded hovels in Gaza City. I saw the corpses of the victims, including children. This became a surgical strike on a bomb-making factory. I have watched Israel demolish homes and entire apartment blocks to create wide buffer zones between the Palestinians and the Israeli troops that ring Gaza. I have interviewed the destitute and homeless families, some camped out in crude shelters erected in the rubble.

Israel Trained On How To Lie To US Public

August 3, 2014 Patrick Cockburn, www.independent.co.uk Educate! Israel, Mass Media, Palestine, Propaganda

Israeli spokesmen have their work cut out explaining how they have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, compared with just three civilians killed in Israel by Hamas rocket and mortar fire. But on television and radio and in newspapers, Israeli government spokesmen such as Mark Regev appear slicker and less aggressive than their predecessors, who were often visibly indifferent to how many Palestinians were killed. There is a reason for this enhancement of the PR skills of Israeli spokesmen. Going by what they say, the playbook they are using is a professional, well-researched and confidential study on how to influence the media and public opinion in America and Europe. Written by the expert Republican pollster and political strategist Dr Frank Luntz, the study was commissioned five years ago by a group called The Israel Project, with offices in the US and Israel, for use by those "who are on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel". Every one of the 112 pages in the booklet is marked "not for distribution or publication" and it is easy to see why. The Luntz report, officially entitled "The Israel project's 2009 Global Language Dictionary, was leaked almost immediately to Newsweek Online, but its true importance has seldom been appreciated. It should be required reading for everybody, especially journalists, interested in any aspect of Israeli policy because of its "dos and don'ts" for Israeli spokesmen.

Obama Should Release Ukraine Evidence

July 30, 2014 Consortium News, www.consortiumnews.com Organize! Barack Obama, Propaganda, Russia, Ukraine

U.S.–Russian tensions are building in a precarious way over Ukraine, and we are far from certain that your advisers fully appreciate the danger of escalation. The New York Times and other media outlets are treating sensitive issues in dispute as flat-fact, taking their cue from U.S. government sources. Twelve days after the shoot-down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, your administration still has issued no coordinated intelligence assessment summarizing what evidence exists to determine who was responsible – much less to convincingly support repeated claims that the plane was downed by a Russian-supplied missile in the hands of Ukrainian separatists. Your administration has not provided any satellite imagery showing that the separatists had such weaponry, and there are several other “dogs that have not barked.” Washington’s credibility, and your own, will continue to erode, should you be unwilling – or unable – to present more tangible evidence behind administration claims. In what follows, we put this in the perspective of former intelligence professionals with a cumulative total of 260 years in various parts of U.S. intelligence.

Ex-Israeli Soldier Speaks Shocking Truth About Israel

July 28, 2014 Digital Resistance, www.digital-resistance.com Educate! Israel, Palestine, Propaganda, Wars and Militarism

The talk by Eran Efrati was filmed in Denver, Colorado on March 3, 2014 as part of The Soldier and the Refusenik U.S. tour with Maya Wind. Eran talk about his experiences in the IDF and then more broadly discusses Israel, its relationship to the U.S. and the global expansion of militarism. Eran Efrati, 28, was born and raised in Jerusalem. After graduating high school he enlisted in the IDF, where he served as a combat soldier and company sergeant in Battalion 50 of the Nachal Division. He spent most of his service in Hebron and throughout the West Bank. In 2009, he was discharged and joined Breaking the Silence, an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers working to raise awareness about the daily reality in the Occupied Territories. He worked as the chief investigator of the organization, collecting testimonies from IDF soldiers about their activities. He also guided political tours and to the West Bank and worked to educate Israeli youth about the reality of being a soldier in an occupying army. His collected testimonies appear in the booklet “Operation Cast Lead” and their most recent release “Our Harsh Logic”. Since leaving Breaking the Silence, his investigative reports appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian. Today he is active with the Israeli groups Anarchists Against the Wall and Boycott from Within. Key points from this lecture: There is a heavy indoctrination in Israel, from an early age in schools, which uses the holocaust to create paranoia and fear against ‘the enemy’. Israeli soldiers are trained intensively for a war, whilst their actual military duties are to subdue and control Palestinians.

The Seductions Of Manhood: Drone Morality

July 28, 2014 Michael Schwalbe, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Drones, Propaganda, Wars and Militarism, Youth

In the fall of 2006 a local anti-war activist spoke to the students in my social inequality class. He criticized U.S. military intervention in the affairs of other countries and the profit-driven “global war on terror.” He was a compelling speaker in part because of his twenty years in the military, including stints in Special Forces as an Army Ranger. No one could dismiss him as a naive pacifist. At the end of his talk, a young woman asked, “If you feel the way you do, why did you join the army?” He said that it had taken him decades to arrive at his views. “Remember,” he said, “in 1970 I was a typical 18-year-old American boy.” My guest speaker was a typical American boy in the sense that he saw military service as a rite of passage into manhood and a way to live out his macho fantasies. He was also a typical American boy in that he knew almost nothing about people in other countries, about history or geopolitics, or about U.S. imperialism. His ignorance and his desire for manhood status led him into the arms of a vast apparatus of violence from which it took twenty years to extricate himself. The same trap captures many young men today. Turning adolescent fantasies and the desire for manhood status into collectively wrought horrors would not be possible, however, without the mass inculcation of drone morality, by which I mean a morality that reveres power and control, equates the good with rule-following and obedience to authority, and refuses to extend empathy to those defined as Others. Military socialization is the paradigm case of instilling drone morality.

Israeli War Room Spreads Propaganda On Social Media

July 25, 2014 Ali Abunimah, www.globalresearch.ca Educate! Gaza, Israel, Propaganda, Social Media, Wars and Militarism

Students at the IDC Herzliya “war room,” seen here in a screenshot, focus on posting propaganda justifying Israel’s attack on Gaza on Facebook. As the death toll from Israel’s savage bombardment of Gaza continues to climb, Israel has once again turned to students to sell the slaughter online. “Although they haven’t been called up to the army yet, they’ve decided to enlist in a civilian mission that is no less important – Israeli propaganda [hasbara],” Ynet’s Hebrew edition reported about a massive initiative organized by the Israeli student union branch at theInterdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC Herzliya), a prestigious private university. Hasbara war room “Hasbara,” literally “explaining,” is the term used in Israel for government propaganda aimed at overseas audiences. “The goal is to deliver a very clear message to people abroad – Israel has the right to defend itself,” Lidor Bar David told Ynet. Bar David, a student, and one of the organizers of the “war room,” adds, “We want people abroad who don’t know our reality to understand exactly what is going on here.”

Petition Circulators Deceive On Fracking

July 14, 2014 BlueDaze Drilling Reform, www.texassharon.com Educate! Democracy, Fracking, Propaganda, Texas

The industry has showered Texans, even those who don’t live in Denton or have mineral holdings there, with more misleading propaganda than I can count. See: Scam Alert… for a post with updated examples of letters sent to mineral owners. Today, Breitling Energy has a full page color ad in the Denton Record Chronicle. Breitling CEO, Chris Faulkner, who lives in Irving nowhere near fracking, recently invited Denton residents to “…fall on their swords for fracking.” Texas Railroad Commissioner, Barry Smitherman, suggests in a letter that could be an audition for a job with The Onion, that Russia is financing the Denton ban effort. We know Smitherman is looking for a job. Texas voters recognized him for the utter failure he is and rejected his bid for promotion to Texas Attorney General. Since I am the one and only person involved in the 100% grassroots effort in Denton who works for an environmental organization, Smitherman must be pointing the finger at me. I have receive no money from Russia but, if I do, the vodka is on me. NOTE: See Denton Councilman Roden’s response to Smitherman. Last week, and oil lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute even claimed democracy is irresponsible.

Another US Military Study Of Social Media Users

July 9, 2014 Ben Quinn and James Ball, www.theguardian.com Educate! Occupy, Propaganda, Social Media, Surveillance, Wars and Militarism

The activities of users of Twitter and other social media services were recorded and analysed as part of a major project funded by the US military, in a program that covers ground similar to Facebook’s controversial experiment into how to control emotions by manipulating news feeds. Research funded directly or indirectly by the US Department of Defense’s military research department, known as Darpa, has involved users of some of the internet’s largest destinations, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Kickstarter, for studies of social connections and how messages spread. While some elements of the multi-million dollar project might raise a wry smile – research has included analysis of the tweets of celebrities such as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, in an attempt to understand influence on Twitter – others have resulted in the buildup of massive datasets of tweets and additional types social media posts. Several of the DoD-funded studies went further than merely monitoring what users were communicating on their own, instead messaging unwitting participants in order to track and study how they responded.

Whose Propaganda? Lessons From Media Reaction To Liz Wahl Resignation

April 3, 2014 Steve Horn, www.whowhatwhy.com Educate! Mass Media, Propaganda, Russia

Liz Wahl’s on-air resignation as a Russia Today news anchor came amid a perfect geopolitical storm. She announced her departure from RT just as tensions escalated between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine. “I cannot be part of a network funded by the Russian government that whitewashes the actions of Putin,” said the 28-year-old American reporter and show host, who worked at RT America for two-and-a-half years. “I am proud to be an American and believe in disseminating the truth. And that is why, after this newscast, I am resigning.” Wahl’s camera-ready goodbye quickly went viral on the web, and made her a U.S. mainstream-media darling. Most commentators saw the Wahl resignation as a casebook study in how government-sponsored journalism inevitably degenerates into rank propaganda. Yet few have examined what this incident reveals about the mind-set of America’s corporate-owned media.

Exposed: Britain’s New Cyberwarfare Program

March 17, 2014 Ben Quinn, www.theguardian.com Educate! Propaganda

The Ministry of Defence is developing a secret, multimillion-pound research programme into the future of cyberwarfare, including how emerging technologies such as social media and psychological techniques can be harnessed by the military to influence people's beliefs. With the advent of sophisticated data-processing capabilities (including big data), the big number-crunchers can detect, model and counter all manner of online activities just by detecting the behavioural patterns they see in the data and adjusting their tactics accordingly. Cyberwarfare of the future may be less about hacking electrical power grids and more about hacking minds by shaping the environment in which political debate takes place.

The Pentagon’s Christmas-War Message

December 25, 2013 Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Media, Propaganda, Wars and Militarism

The Pentagon looks for every opportunity to propagandize for war -- even stealing the message of peace for Christmas and turning the Santa Claus myth into a message of war. Jack Balkwill of LUV News writes "a series of propaganda videos is out by NORAD with which to indoctrinate our children into thinking Santa Clause is escorted by fighter jets so that he can deliver toys without being attacked by bad guys. Your tax dollars in action, full of generals talking about Santa being real and participating, video after video-- some of them in French in case the Children of Quebec aren't getting their fair share of propaganda, encouraging them on to military careers when they come of age to be blown to bits for the capitalists." The military and security state is so dominant in US culture and in the federal budget as well as around the world with at least 1,180 military bases and outposts around the world. You can see their artful propaganda in this video series, let's hope that by exposing it Americans will be find their Christmas-war propaganda revolting.

Twenty-Five Ways To Suppress Truth: The Rules of Disinformation

November 2, 2013 H. Michael Sweeney, www.proparanoid.com Educate! Media, Propaganda

Built upon "Thirteen Techniques for Truth Suppression" by David Martin, the following may be useful to the initiate in the world of dealing with veiled and half-truth, lies, and suppression of truth when serious crimes are studied in public forums. This, sadly, includes every day news media, one of the worst offenders with respect to being a source of disinformation. Where the crime involves a conspiracy, or a conspiracy to cover up the crime, there will invariably be a disinformation campaign launched against those seeking to uncover and expose the truth and/or the conspiracy. There are specific tactics which disinfo artists tend to apply, as revealed here. Also included with this material are seven common traits of the disinfo artist which may also prove useful in identifying players and motives. The more a particular party fits the traits and is guilty of following the rules, the more likely they are a professional disinfo artist with a vested motive. People can be bought, threatened, or blackmailed into providing disinformation, so even "good guys" can be suspect in many cases.

Disinformation Strategies and Tactics

September 9, 2013 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Strategize! Media, Propaganda

Repeatedly on multiple issues we have seen how concentrated corporate wealth uses disinformation campaigns to control the dialogue, create false narratives and mislead the public. The tactics described in the slide show below are not only used by big business interests as well as government. Government has even more tools as we can see in the misinformation campaign that is currently occurring with regard to Syria and previous wars. The tactics of putting forward false experts, phony "think tanks" and echo chambers of misinformation are common ones. These tactics continue to get more sophisticated.

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