The article is a little too long in my opinion, but still very good. Gavin.<\/p>
\r\n\r\nPlease visit my nonprofit website.
\r\nExposing the Cancer Racket. Gavin.
\r\nPlease Click Here<\/p>
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOur Masters of Propaganda <\/p>
\r\nClick Here<\/p>
\r\nby Stephen Gowans
\r\nNovember 12, 2001 <\/p>
\r\n\r\nWashington pulls out the stops in its own propaganda war <\/p>
\r\n\r\nOne of the surest ways of knowing you're being blanketed by propaganda is to be told\r\nthat whatever makes Washington look bad is propaganda. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThat's been happening a lot lately. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nAs the devastation in Afghanistan becomes clearer, as stories of broken bodies and\r\nblood and flattened Red Cross depots and orphaned children and weeping mothers\r\ntrickle out of the war-torn and drought-stricken country, the White House and the State\r\nDepartment and the Pentagon fire back: Don't believe it. It's propaganda. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nIf it looks like the war that was supposed to capture Osama bin Laden dead or alive has\r\nbecome a war on Afghans, well, that's just because the Taliban, backward, medireview,\r\nunworldly, are masters of deception. Through guile they've lured us all into believing\r\ninnocents are being blasted away, displaced, and threatened with starvation. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nBut isn't it always that way? The other side, no matter how small, no matter how poor,\r\nno matter how devastated by war, crippled by sanctions, weakened by IMF reforms, is\r\nalways cunningly able to manipulate perceptions, twist the truth, exaggerate, tell tall\r\ntales, while Washington, with its ready access to the media, to PR firms, to spin-doctors,\r\nto overnight polling, struggles to get its message -- and the truth -- out. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe 1.5 million Iraqis the UN says have died from sanctions-related causes? Iraqi\r\npropaganda. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe thousands of Yugoslav civilians who died during NATO's 78-day air war against\r\nYugoslavia in 1999? Propaganda. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe war crimes the US committed against the Serbs and Iraqis, against Afghans and\r\nSudanese? Propaganda. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nWhen NATO missiles destroyed the Serb Radio-TV building, killing civilians inside,\r\nBritish Prime Minister Tony Blair said the attack was necessary to shut down Yugoslav\r\nPresident Slobodan Milosevic's \"propaganda machine.\" But Serb Radio-TV was relaying\r\npictures of the extent of devastation NATO bombs were wreaking on civilian\r\ninfrastructure, and people. Not soldiers, and police, but old ladies, and children, and,\r\nwell, people who looked like you and me. It made people in the West wonder whether\r\nbombing was the answer. It made them ask questions and squirm in discomfort and\r\nwonder about the war's morality. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nAnd one thing you can't have is the public going soft on you. No sir! You don't want a\r\nrepeat of what happened to former president Lyndon Johnson. When he looked out his\r\nwindow in 1968 to see hundreds of thousands of protesters, he knew, then and there,\r\nthe Vietnam war was lost. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nAstonishingly, the attack on the Serb broadcasting building, a blatant war crime, has\r\nnever been the object of a war crimes indictment, but then hundreds of war crimes\r\ncommitted by the United States in other wars have been sheltered from prosecution,\r\ntoo. It helps when you have a veto over the Security Council. It helps when you refuse to\r\napprove an International Criminal Court that could impartially prosecute war crimes,\r\ndemanding blanket immunity from prosecution as the price of your approval. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nInstead, the Hague Tribunal, a creation of the UN Security Council, and therefore under\r\nthe control of the principal members of NATO, threatened to indict Milosevic for the\r\nattack. Milosevic knew of the attack in advance, the Tribunal's chief prosecutor Carla del\r\nPonte charged, and failed to warn the civilians inside, a cynical ploy to use their deaths\r\nfor propaganda purposes. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nSee the pattern? <\/p>
\r\n\r\nCommit outrages, trample international law, ignore international protocols banning\r\nattacks on civilians, and then, when the other side complains, and the public gets\r\nrestive, dismiss it all as propaganda. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nBut it must be propaganda, right? We're civilized. We would never kill countless\r\nnumbers of civilians. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nYeah, so maybe we used weapons of mass destruction against Hiroshima and Nagasaki\r\n(and lied about the targets being military bases selected to minimize civilian casualties.)\r\nMaybe we firebombed Tokyo during WW II. Maybe we carpet bombed North Korea until\r\nthere were no targets left to bomb, killing millions. Maybe we stood by and watched with\r\na check list as Indonesian dictator Suharto rounded up and murdered up to a million\r\ncommunists. Maybe we carpet bombed North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, wiping out\r\nthree million. Maybe we killed 200,000 in the Gulf War. Maybe we killed 2,000\r\nPanamanian civilians to arrest Manuel Noriega, a former CIA operative. Maybe we\r\nbombed Yugoslavia for 78 days, killing thousands. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nBut that was all in the past. This time it's different, right? <\/p>
\r\n\r\nSo why has the Pentagon bought the exclusive rights to photos taken of Afghanistan by\r\na commercial satellite, photos it's not letting anyone else see? It's not as if the Pentagon\r\nneeds the photos. It has its own satellites that provide far better photos. It's more like\r\nthe Pentagon doesn't care to have you see what's really going on. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nSo why did Washington prevail on television networks and newspapers not to broadcast\r\nand publish the statements of Osama bin Laden, at least not without a fair amount of\r\njudicious editing? Why doesn't Washington want its free press to allow you to hear what\r\nbin Laden has to say? Is it because the Saudi millionaire isn't taking credit for the Sept.\r\n11 attacks (a reminder, perhaps, that Washington has yet to produce any concrete\r\nevidence that bin Laden, Al Qaeda or the Taliban had anything to do with the attacks of\r\nthe Pentagon and the WTC)? <\/p>
\r\n\r\nSo why did CNN chairman Walter Isaacson order CNN reporters \"to make sure people\r\nunderstand that when they see civilian suffering there, it's in the context of a terrorist\r\nattack that caused enormous suffering in the United States,\" (as if the suffering of\r\ninnocent people in one part of the world justifies the suffering of innocent people in\r\nanother part of the world)? <\/p>
\r\n\r\nAnd why did Rick Davis, CNN's head of standards and practices, tell anchors to put\r\nscenes of Afghans suffering \"into context?\" He recommended anchors say: \"The\r\nPentagon has repeatedly stressed that it is trying to minimize civilian casualties in\r\nAfghanistan, even as the Taliban regime continues to harbor terrorists who are\r\nconnected to the Sept. 11 attacks that claimed thousands of innocent lives in the US.\r\nWe must keep in mind...that these US military actions are in response to a terrorist\r\nattack that killed close to 5,000 innocent people in the US.\" <\/p>
\r\n\r\nWhen US warplanes attacked the remote Afghan farming village of Chowkar-Karez,\r\ndozens of civilians were killed. A Pentagon official said, \"the people there are dead\r\nbecause we wanted them dead.\" Their crime? They sympathized with the Taliban and Al\r\nQaeda. So, if the Pentagon is deliberately attacking civilians, why is CNN continuing to\r\npoint to the Pentagon's less than honest assurances that it's minimizing civilian\r\ncasualties? Far from minimizing noncombatant deaths, the US military is deliberately\r\nattacking civilians. To say otherwise is propaganda, isn't it? <\/p>
\r\n\r\nSo why did representatives of Hollywood studios, including the actor Sally Field, agree\r\nthat Hollywood would produce films that keep the public on side the war on terrorism?\r\nIsn't that propaganda? Is there some reason the public may no longer want to be on\r\nside? Is there a risk the public could go soft? <\/p>
\r\n\r\nAnd what of New York-based Human Rights Watch? Is it part of Washington's\r\npropaganda machine, part of its plan to prevent the public from rethinking its support for\r\nthe war? <\/p>
\r\n\r\nYou wouldn't think so, at first. Didn't Human Rights Watch document the deaths of 500\r\nYugoslav civilians, and chastise NATO for not taking sufficient care in its bombing of\r\nYugoslavia? And didn't the group establish that there were between 25 and maybe as\r\nmany as 35 civilians killed by US warplanes at Chowkar-Karez? <\/p>
\r\n\r\nYes, it did. But its estimate of the number of civilians killed in Yugoslavia (500) was on\r\nthe low side of other estimates, even less than NATO's own initial estimate. And Human\r\nRights Watch never accused NATO of war crimes, not even for the bombing of Serb\r\nRadio-TV. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe group's finding that between 25 and 35 civilians were killed at Chowkar-Karez is\r\nconsistent with its estimates of casualties in the 1999 NATO air war against Yugoslavia\r\n-- both contradict the other side's estimates and therefore corroborate the Washington\r\nline that the number of civilian casualties is being exaggerated. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe Pentagon never denies that civilian casualties have occurred. Instead, it argues that\r\nthe true number is inflated (although how it could know since it doesn't have soldiers on\r\nthe ground is a question the media steers clear of), making the case that the enemy has\r\nan interest in inflating the numbers, which, of course, it does (just as the Pentagon has\r\nan interest in minimizing them.) <\/p>
\r\n\r\nHuman Rights Watch, presenting itself as an impartial observer, corroborates the\r\ncharge by producing lower estimates than the enemy government does, and thereby\r\nunderscores Washington's claim that the enemy is exaggerating for propaganda\r\npurposes. The result is that attention is deflected from more pertinent matters: there are\r\ncivilian casualties; the reasons for inflicting harm on civilians are entirely bogus; the\r\ncivilian casualties may not be unintended at all. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nSo it is that Human Rights Watch will grant that there were civilian casualties at\r\nChowkar-Karez, making the point that there are fewer casualties than the Taliban says,\r\nwithout addressing the issue of whether US warplanes committed a war crime by\r\ndeliberately attacking the civilians? Absurdly, the question becomes, were there 35 killed\r\nor 100? as if 35 is all right. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nWho is Human Rights Watch, anyway? Take a look at the organization's web site and it\r\nbecomes immediately clear that this isn't a group of financially struggling human rights\r\nadvocates, camped out in a low-rent office in some crummy part of town, proudly\r\nmaintaining its independence from government and corporate elites. On the contrary,\r\nit's well-funded, and it's well-connected. Its links snake through the foreign policy\r\nestablishment of the United States, through the State Department, and through the\r\ngovernment's propaganda arm, Radio Free Europe. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nHow immensely bold then to claim that the Taliban are propaganda specialists. Please.\r\nWith its PR firms, its polling, its PsyOps, it press offices, with CNN and the press yielding\r\nto the White House request not to disclose Osama bin Laden's remarks unedited, with\r\nHollywood pledging to join the fight against terrorism, the real propaganda specialists\r\nare to be found in Washington, and New York, and L.A., not Kabul. Yes, the Taliban\r\nhave an interest in inflating the number of civilian casualties. But, by the same token,\r\nWashington has an interest in minimizing, in obscuring, and in denying the true extent of\r\nthe human misery it's responsible for creating. And it has infinitely more resources to do\r\nso. <\/p>
\r\n\r\nDecades ago, the old Nazi, Hermann Goering, leaned in to his microphone at the\r\nNuremberg trials and held forth on war and propaganda. The Nazis, with their Reichstag\r\nfire, their humanitarian intervention into the Sudentenland, their stories of Germany\r\nunder attack from within and without, were masters of propaganda. <\/p>
\r\n\r\n\"Why of course the people don't want war,\" began Goering. \"That is understood. But\r\nafter all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a\r\nsimple matter to drag the people along.\" <\/p>
\r\n\r\nThe Nazi leader paused, then continued. \"All you have to do is to tell them they are\r\nbeing attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the\r\ncountry to danger.\" <\/p>
\r\n\r\nSound familiar? <\/p>
\r\n\r\nNow, ask yourself this: Why is there so much Washington doesn't want you to know? <\/p>
\r\n\r\nAnd who are the real master propagandists? \r\n<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"http:\/\/www.swans.com\/library\/art7\/gowans12.html","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"One of the surest ways of knowing you're being blanketed by propaganda is to be told\r\nthat whatever makes Washington look bad is propaganda","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2001\/11\/our_master.html","filesize":"12.2 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2001\/11\/13019.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}