Propaganda

Honest Media: Fire The Fox Producer

December 25, 2014 Kymone Freeman, www.popularresistance.org Petitions and Online Actions Media, police brutality, Propaganda, Racism

Fox affiliate caight faking a "kill a cop" protest chant should be fired! After the NYPD Police shooting, Baltimore Fox affiliate WBFF played a misleadingly edited clip from the recent National “Justice for All” March in Washington, D.C. to make it sound like protesters were calling on people to “kill a cop." We call on WBFF to fire the producer responsible for airing a deliberate attempt to fan the flames of violence. Why is this important? WBFF offered an apology, but the producer responsible for airing a deliberate attempt to fan the flames of violence should be fired! This was NOT a misquote. This was NOT a honest MISTAKE. It was a doctored propaganda campaign launched against peaceful demonstrators to support the irrational claims of NYPD Union President Patrick Lynch that blood is on the hands of those who dare to protest against police brutality and state sanctioned executions.

Scotland Building Media For 99%

December 21, 2014 Steve Rushton, www.occupy.com Create! Media, Propaganda, Scotland

Current alternative media in Scotland, like Bella Caledonia, focus on in-depth analyses and commentary pieces. But Common Space aims to push the scope of alternative news with a rolling news platform – an ambitious plan launching in the New Year, which will contain a policy section that promotes and critiques radical, alternative ways of financially and politically organizing society. Moving forward, the group also seeks to run a broadcast channel with events listings, and even a shop. In addition, it will have a People's Space, envisioned as a new social media platform allowing people to connect for ideas and skills exchange. Since the referendum, other local Common Weal groups have sprung up around Scotland, organically and autonomously. Many are already envisioning a "tour" to link these groups together.

War By Media And The Triumph Of Propaganda

December 7, 2014 John Pilger, www.informationclearinghouse.info Educate! Media, Propaganda, Wars and Militarism

The times we live in are so dangerous and so distorted in public perception that propaganda is no longer, as Edward Bernays called it, an "invisible government". It is the government. It rules directly without fear of contradiction and its principal aim is the conquest of us: our sense of the world, our ability to separate truth from lies. The information age is actually a media age. We have war by media; censorship by media; demonology by media; retribution by media; diversion by media - a surreal assembly line of obedient clichés and false assumptions. This power to create a new "reality" has building for a long time. Forty-five years ago, a book entitled The Greening of America caused a sensation. On the cover were these words: "There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual."

Ask Not For Whom The Wall Falls

November 16, 2014 David Seaton, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Berlin Wall, Capitalism, Propaganda

We are now in the midst of commemorating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, which was followed in short order by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its entire international system. I say “commemorate,” but when it comes to the collapse of the wall and enormous Soviet system, the word most people use is “celebrate.” But here I would interject an ancient Spanish folk proverb which goes, “when you see your neighbor’s beard on fire, put your beard to soak;” or the not so ancient but equally valid American saying, “what goes around, comes around.” In my opinion the most unbiased, irrefutable, undeniable take-away from the collapse of the USSR and its entire ideological superstructure is that huge, powerful, complex and historically successful systems, which have embodied the hopes and dreams of several generations of people all around the world, can just up and die with little or no warning .

Media Manufacturing Consent For War

October 11, 2014 Lee Camp, www.leecamp.net Resistance Report Media, Propaganda, Wars and Militarism

On his show "Redacted Tonight" on RT America comedian Lee Camp showed precisely how the media manufactures America's consent for war. The percentage of Americans supporting bombing soared after the corporate media began their onslaught of fear. Camp also gives some creative ideas on what these impressive powers of influence could be used for OTHER than bombing and destruction. He recommends they be put towards slowing our ravenous consumerism or getting people to consider what really matters in life. If the media's 24/7 cycle were used for positive ideas instead of fear and anxiety, we would quite possibly live in a very different world. (Lee Camp is the host of "Redacted Tonight," which airs every Friday at 8pm ET.)

Beyond 935 Lies

October 5, 2014 David Swanson, www.warisacrime.org Educate! Civil Rights, Media, Propaganda, Wars and Militarism

Charles Lewis' book, 935 Lies, would make a fine introduction to reality for anyone who believes the U.S. government usually means well or corporations tend to tell the truth in the free market. And it would make an excellent introduction to the decline and fall of the corporate media. Even if these topics aren't new to you, this book has something to add and retells the familiar quite well. The familiar topics include the Gulf of Tonkin, the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, the civil rights movement, U.S. aggression and CIA overthrows, Pinochet, Iran-Contra, lying tobacco companies, and Edward R. Murrow. Lewis brings insight to these and other topics, and if he doesn't document that things were better before the 1960s, he does establish that horrible things have been getting worse since, and are now much more poorly reported on.

War Propaganda Continues On Corporate Media

October 5, 2014 Peter Hart, www.fair.org Educate! Media, Propaganda, Wars and Militarism

When government officials launch an ill-defined war based on dubious claims about a threat to the "homeland," you might hope that would be the time for reporters to aggressively examine and question government claims. But corporate media see things differently; war time is when TV screens are full of former generals and hawkish politicians, and reporters are busy transmitting official claims. As CBS Evening News reporter Bob Orr (9/24/14) told viewers last week: Pentagon officials said, in fact, the bombs and missiles hit every intended target. When have they ever said any different?

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.”

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