De documentaire Shadows of Liberty (2012)
reveals the extraordinary truth behind the news media: censorship, cover-ups and corporate control.
Filmmaker Jean-Philippe Tremblay takes a journey through the darker corridors of the US media, where global conglomerates call the shots. For decades, their overwhelming influence has distorted news journalism and compromised its values.
In highly revealing stories, renowned journalists, activists and academics give insider accounts of a broken media system. Controversial news reports are suppressed, people are censored for speaking out, and lives are shattered as the arena for public expression is turned into a private profit zone.
Tracing the story of media manipulation through the years, Shadows of Liberty poses a crucial question: why have we let a handful of powerful corporations write the news? Media reform is urgent and freedom of the press is fundamental.
Om u een indruk te geven van de kritiek die wordt geuit door vooraanstaande Amerikaanse journalisten en academici in Shadows of Liberty zal ik enkelen van hem citeren. Zo verklaart de Amerikaanse journalist en oprichter van het Institute for Public Accuracy, Norman Solomon, over de zogeheten 'vrije pers' naar aanleiding van een aantal concrete voorbeelden:
We are now at a stage where every journalist who isn't asleep understands that corporate power has made it impossible for them to do the job as it needs to be done.
De Amerikaanse hoogleraar en journalist Robert McChesney zegt naar aanleiding van de verandering van de mediawet onder president Bill Clinton waardoor de commerciële massamedia in handen kwamen van slechts enkele grote concerns:
This was presented to the public as if it was all about introducing free market-reform. We are going to take these magical technologies, deregulate, and open up the magic of the free market and let it work its wonders on communication. It was a preposterous claim… Pure crony capitalism at its worst.
Janine Jackson, Program Director of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting):
Media corporations need that favorable policy that is going to allow them to grow and make more and more money. Politicians need that media to give them that airtime they could not exist without. Who is left out of that deal? Well, of course, that is the public.
Met als gevolg dat dat vandaag de dag:
Massive corporations dominate the U.S. media landscape. Through a history of mergers and acquisitions, these companies have concentrated their control over what we see, hear and read. In many cases, these companies control everything from initial production to final distribution.
Oftewel:
6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America
This infographic created by Jason at Frugal Dad shows that almost all media comes from the same six sources.
That's consolidated from 50 companies back in 1983.
NOTE: This infographic is from last year and is missing some key transactions. GE does not own NBC (or Comcast or any media) anymore. So that 6th company is now Comcast. And Time Warner doesn't own AOL, so Huffington Post isn't affiliated with them.
But the fact that a few companies own everything demonstrates 'the illusion of choice,' Frugal Dad says. While some big sites, like Digg and Reddit aren't owned by any of the corporations, Time Warner owns news sites read by millions of Americans every year.
Tijdens de ondertekening van de Telecommunication Act sprak president Bill Clinton tevreden van 'truly revolutionary legislation that will bring the future to our doorstep.' Maar het enige 'revolutionaire' was dat de wet mega-fusies mogelijk maakte van multi-media giganten, die onmiddellijk de pluriformiteit van de informatievoorziening drastisch verminderde. Vanuit commercieel en ideologisch oogpunt was voor deze commerciële mega-concerns niet de dagelijkse werkelijkheid interessant, maar 'a perception' van de realiteit die door 'perception managers,' de journalisten en hun opdrachtgevers, wordt aangeprezen als de objectieve 'waarheid.' De journaliste Amy Goodman van Democracy Now!:
In this high-tech digital age, with high definition television and digital radio, all we ever get is static. A veil of distortion and lies and misrepresentation and half truths to obscure reality.
Een andere gerenommeerde Amerikaanse journalist die de mainstream-media van binnenuit kent is Chris Hedges,
currently a columnist for news website Truthdig, a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City, and a contributing author for OpEdNews. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times, where he was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years (1990–2005).
Onder andere naar aanleiding van één van de grofste schendingen van het internationaal recht in de afgelopen vijftien jaar, de Amerikaanse inval in Irak merkt Hedges op dat
in times of war the press looses all critical distance. Journalists see themselves as first and foremost patriots. The result is essentially dissemination of propaganda.
Op zijn beurt zegt Jonathan Landay, National Security Correspondent 'Knight Ridder':
The terrorist attack of september 11th, as tragic as it was, was almost like godsent to the Bush administration because it gave them the raison d'être that they were looking for to invade Iraq.
Ter verduidelijking: Knight Ridder was an American media company, specializing in newspaper and Internet publishing. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company on June 27, 2006, it was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the United States, with 32 daily newspapers sold.
Over Jonathan Landay schreef zijn collega Erik Wemple, de mediacriticus van The Washington Post:
The media’s Iraq War failure
Every five years or so, around mid- to late March, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel should be media stars. They’re the two former Knight-Ridder reporters who bucked the U.S. media’s repetition of the Bush administration’s march-to-Iraq-war messaging. They published dissenting material, though their voices didn’t pierce the compliant noise from their peers.
In a report set to air tomorrow, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asks Landay: 'How did it feel…to be the lone holdouts in this pursuit of truth and fact?'
Landay responds: '''Lone holdout'' is a good word because even some of our newspapers—we work for a chain of 30 newspapers — even some of our own newspapers wouldn’t print our own stories. Why? Because they say it wasn’t in the Washington Post. They hadn’t seen it in the New York Times, so how could we, as Knight-Ridder journalists, have gotten the same thing? So it was very lonely.'
And it still is. Despite all the anniversary attention to the media’s catastrophic failures vis-a-vis the Iraq war, Strobel tells Amanpour: 'I have to say, ten years later, as it stands, we’re not exactly getting — except for your kind invitation, you know, other people are talking about this, and they’re not necessarily the people who got it right.'
Jonathan Landay. 'Because they say it wasn’t in the Washington Post. They hadn’t seen it in the New York Times...'
Hetzelfde verschijnsel zien we in de polderpers, waar de Nederlandse 'deskundigen,' die er volledig naast zaten wat betreft 'Saddam's Massavernietigingswapens' nu nog steeds het hoogste woord hebben over mogelijk geweld tegen Syrië, of Iran, of Rusland, Oost-Oekraïne, of waar dan ook waar de westerse geopolitieke of economische belangen uitgebreid dienen te worden. De schaamteloosheid van propagandisten als Geert Mak, Henk Hofland, Ko Colijn etc. is verbijsterend, maar wel noodzakelijk om het neoliberale systeem zo lang mogelijk overeind te houden, tot het vanzelf van binnenuit ineenstort. Terwijl de Nederlandse journalisten, voorafgaand aan het grootscheepse westerse geweld tegen Irak, hadden kunnen weten wat de werkelijke drijfveren waren van Washington en Wall Street, (zoals ik al begin 2003 vermeldde in een serie artikelen voor het tijdschrift De Humanist en in een serie VPRO-radioprogramma's), leidde dit niet tot een serieuze mediakritiek in Nederland. Een Amerikaanse krant als de New York Times bood dan wel publiekelijk haar excuses aan voor het feit dat ze door de Bush-propaganda op sleeptouw was genomen, maar de Nederlandse media deden alsof ze hun werk naar behoren hadden gedaan, terwijl bijvoorbeeld de zelfbenoemde 'kwaliteitskrant' NRC/Handelsblad op 20 maart 2003, de dag dat de Amerikaanse en Britse illegale inval in Irak begon, het volgende redactionele advies had gegeven:
Nu de oorlog is begonnen, moeten president Bush en premier Blair worden gesteund. Die steun kan niet blijven steken in verbale vrijblijvendheid. Dat betekent dus politieke steun - en als het moet ook militaire.
Dit advies is van belang om niet te vergeten aangezien deze houding kenmerkend is voor de Nederlandse mainstream-journalistiek. Met het oog op de komende propaganda voor welke oorlog dan ook is het goed Shadows of Liberty te bekijken, waarin een ervaringsdeskundige als bijvoorbeeld Robert Baer te zien en te horen is.
Robert Booker 'Bob' Baer (born July 1, 1952) is an American author and a former CIA case officer who was primarily assigned to the Middle East. He is currently TIME.com's intelligence columnist and has contributed to Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Baer is a frequent commentator and author about issues related to international relations, espionage and U.S. foreign policy…
Baer recently wrote an online forward to Hoodwinked, by John Perkins, on Amazon.com:
I wasn't twenty pages into Hoodwinked when I realized Perkins nailed it. What got us into the mess we're in today, the worst recession since the Great Depression, is the same grotesque capitalism cum corruption we shoved down the throat of the Third World since the end of World War II. (Yes, the Third World's elites were cheerfully corrupted.) We, and the rest of the West, learned the trick of selling unneeded infrastructure, services, over-sophisticated weapons—stuff that could never benefit anyone other than the people who lined their pockets. And yes, Perkins is right, the international economists and press were handmaidens to the thievery. It was all fairly routine until 9/11, when the real gorging started. Tell the people their roof is on fire and they'll give you whatever you ask for. Between 2001 and 2009 the Department of Defense budget increased 74 percent, and that is not to mention the hundreds of billions of dollars in related contracts. Nigeria on the Potomac. Perkins is quick to state he doesn't believe in a grand conspiracy theory. Few of the people who call the shots have ever met each other. They don't have a playbook other than a couple of fraudulent economists like Milton Friedman and the others who worship at the altar of deregulation. No, what they have in common is an obsession with the winner takes all. Perkins's message isn’t going to be popular. We're a country invested in a system in which five percent of the world's population consumes 25 percent of the world's resources. It's a system we're trying to sell to the world, only we don't mention that we'll need five planets to sustain it. Perkins isn't the pessimist I am. He says we can save the world if we green it—and, of course, start telling the truth to each other. Otherwise we end up a banana republic like the ones we know so well how to despoil.
Based on the memoirs of a CIA operative (book by Robert Baer). Accounts the false confidence present in the CIA regards the Middle-east, following the end of the Cold War. ...more
In Shadows of Liberty zegt Baer als Middle-East Field Officer, CIA, van 1976 tot 1997:
Look, I ran Iraqi-operations. We didn't have information.
En juist omdat de Amerikaanse gevestigde orde geen bewijzen had dat Saddam Hoessein's regime over massavernietigingswapens beschikte en geen nauwe banden onderhield met de terroristen van 11 september 2001, werden die 'bewijzen' gecreëerd. De Amerikaanse auteur en journalist James Bamford wijst erop dat daarom:
During the 1990s the CIA went outside the organization and it hired a private corporation, the Rendon Group. What Rendon specializes in is not really espionage, it is perception management, it is changing your views, it is creating an image that may or may not be truthful… For the propaganda-campaign the Rendon Group created an opposition party to Saddam, the Iraqi National Congress.
Aangezien de Nederlandse mainstream-pers de Amerikaanse media slaafs volgt en hoog opkijkt tegen bijvoorbeeld de New York Times, en de berichten van de grote westerse internationale persbureaus klakkeloos overschrijft, is het noodzakelijk te weten wie het nieuws fabriceert, dat vervolgens door journalisten wordt verspreid. De invloedrijkste Amerikaanse opiniemaker in de twintigste eeuw was Walter Lippmann, de journalist die het begrip ‘pseudo-events’ introduceerde die in een 'democratie' noodzakelijk zijn om de bevolking in het gareel te houden. In zijn bekende standaardwerk Public Opinion (1922) stelde Lippmann dat
public opinions must be organized for the press if they are to be sound, not by the press... Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event. Access to the real environment must be limited, before anyone can create a pseudo-environment that he thinks is wise or desirable... Though it is itself an irrational force the power of public opinion might be placed at the disposal of those who stood for workable law against brute assertion.
Dus in handen van de rijke en machtige elite. ‘Pseudo-events’ zijn noodzakelijk omdat, aldus Lippmann, de massamens nagenoeg niet in staat is om rationeel te reageren op de wereld en dus een voorgeprogrammeerd propagandabeeld opgediend moet krijgen, een beeld dat de belangen van de gevestigde orde ondersteunt.
De Amerikaanse hoogleraar Stuart Ewen, gespecialiseerd in Media Studies schrijft in zijn boek PR! A Social History of Spin:
Throughout the pages of Public Opinion, Lippmann had asserted that human beings were, for the most part, inherently incapable of responding rationally to their world... For Lippmann, it was not so much people's incapacity to deliberate on issues rationally that was the problem; it was that the time necessary to pursue rational deliberations would only interfere with the smooth exercise of executive power... For Lippmann, the appeal of symbols was that they provided a device for short-circuiting the inconvenience posed by critical reason and public discussion. To Lippmann, symbols were powerful instruments for forging mental agreement among people who -- if engaged in critical dialogue -- would probably disagree. 'When political parties or newspapers declare for Americanism, Progressivism, Law and Order, Justice, Humanity,' he explained, they expect to merge 'conflicting factions which would surely divide if, instead of these symbols, they were invited to discuss a specific program.'
In de dagelijkse praktijk is belangrijk dat iets ‘nieuwswaardig’ in plaats van dat het ‘real’ is. ‘Far more interest was shown in the performance than in what was said,’ zo definieerde de Amerikaanse historicus Daniel Boorstin de werkwijze van de mediadeskundigen. In zijn boek The Image:
The efficient mass production of pseudo-events – in all kinds of packages, in black-and-white, in Technicolor, in words, and in a thousand other forms – is the work of the whole machinery of our society. It is the daily product of men of good will. The media must be fed! The people must be informed! Most pleas for ‘more information’ are therefore misguided. So long as we define information as a knowledge of pseudo-events, ‘more information’ will simply multiply the symptoms without curing the disease.
De onverzadigbaarheid die de consumptiecultuur in het leven houdt kan de permanente honger naar nog meer niet stillen. De alom gerespecteerde Boorstin, die 20 eredoctoraten ontving, stelde in The Image. A Guide To Pseudo-Events in America dat
By harboring, nourishing, and ever enlarging our extravagant expectations we create the demand for illusions with which we deceive ourselves. And which we pay others to make to deceive us.
The making of the illusions which flood our experience has become the business of America, some of its most honest and most necessary and most respectable business. I am thinking not only of advertising and public relations and political rhetoric, but of all the activities which purport to inform and comfort and improve and educate and elevate us: the work of our best journalists, our most enterprising book publishers, our most successful entertainers, our best guides to world travel, and our most influential leaders in foreign relations. Our every effort to satisfy our extravagant expectations simply makes them more extravagant and makes our illusions more attractive. The story of the making of our illusions – ‘the news behind the news’ – has become the most appealing news of the world.
We tyrannize and frustrate ourselves by expecting more than the world can give us or than we can make of the world. We demand that everyone who talks to us, or writes for us, or takes pictures for us, or makes merchandise for us, should live in our world of extravagant expectations. We expect this even of the peoples of foreign countries. We have become so accustomed to our illusions that we mistake them for reality. We demand them. And we demand that there be always more of them, bigger and better and more vivid. They are the world of our making: the world of the image.
Niemand kan die wereld van 'the image' beter verkopen in de huidige beeldcultuur dan public-relations-professionals. Dat was de voornaamste reden waarom de CIA, een staatsapparaat dat oorspronkelijk in het leven was geroepen om geheime informatie over de 'vijand' te vergaren, in de jaren negentig een particuliere PR-concern inhuurde om zelf het politieke beleid te kunnen bepalen. Daarbij is de werkelijkheid niet langer meer doorslaggevend, maar de 'perceptie' ervan, en dus moet men die 'perceptie' manipuleren en zelf creëeren. Enige achtergrondinformatie:
The Rendon Group is a public relations and propaganda firm headed by John Rendon which specializes in providing communications services both nationally and internationally. The Rendon Group website states, 'For nearly three decades, The Rendon Group has been providing innovative global strategic communications solutions from our headquarters in Washington, DC. TRG utilizes state-of-the-art technology as well as traditional public relations tools, assisting leading commercial, government and military organizations.' In a 1998 speech to the National Security Conference (NSC), company founder John Rendon described himself as 'an information warrior, and a perception manager.' James Bamford of Rolling Stone describes him as 'The man who sold the [Iraq] war.' […]
Kuwait
PR Watch reported in 2001,
The Rendon Group's website states that during the Gulf War, it 'established a full-scale communications operation for the Government of Kuwait, including the establishment of a production studio in London producing programming material for the exiled Kuwaiti Television.' Rendon also provided media support for exiled government leaders and helped Kuwaiti officials after the war by 'providing press and site advance to incoming congressional delegations and other visiting US government officials.' Several of Rendon's non-governmental clients also have headquarters in Kuwait: Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, Kuwait University, American Housing Consortium, American Business Council of Kuwait, and KPMY/Peat Marwick.
The Rendon Group's website states that during the Gulf War, it 'established a full-scale communications operation for the Government of Kuwait, including the establishment of a production studio in London producing programming material for the exiled Kuwaiti Television.' Rendon also provided media support for exiled government leaders and helped Kuwaiti officials after the war by 'providing press and site advance to incoming congressional delegations and other visiting US government officials.' Several of Rendon's non-governmental clients also have headquarters in Kuwait: Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, Kuwait University, American Housing Consortium, American Business Council of Kuwait, and KPMY/Peat Marwick.
The Rendon Group's work in Kuwait continued after the war itself had ended. 'If any of you either participated in the liberation of Kuwait City... or if you watched it on television, you would have seen hundreds of Kuwaitis waving small American flags,' John Rendon said in his speech to the NSC. 'Did you ever stop to wonder how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American flags? And for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries? Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs.'
Kosovo
When NATO initiated Operation NOBLE ANVIL air operations directed at Serbian targets to prevent genocide against Kosovo Moslems, it became immediately apparent that the coalition's message was not reaching audiences in the region that were being bombarded by Slobodan Milosevic's information ministry's propaganda. The Rendon Group established the Balkan Information Exchange under contract with U.S. European Command in seven languages including Serbo-Croatian. A different company administers the site today in a ten-language format as the Southeast European Times.
Iraq
According to PR Watch, Rendon was also a major player in the CIA's effort to encourage the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In May 1991, then-President George H. W. Bush signed a presidential finding directing the CIA to create the conditions for Hussein's removal. The hope was that members of the Iraqi military would turn on Hussein and stage a military coup. The CIA did not have the mechanisms in place to make that happen, so they hired the Rendon Group to run a covert anti-Saddam propaganda campaign. Rendon's postwar work involved producing videos and radio skits ridiculing Saddam Hussein, a traveling photo exhibit of Iraqi atrocities, and radio scripts calling on Iraqi army officers to defect.
A February 1998 report by Peter Jennings cited records obtained by ABC News which showed that the Rendon Group spent more than $23 million dollars in the first year of its contract with the CIA. It set up the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an opposition coalition of 19 Iraqi and Kurdish organizations whose main tasks were to 'gather information, distribute propaganda and recruit dissidents.' According to ABC, Rendon came up with the name for the Iraqi National Congress and channeled $12 million of covert CIA funding to it between 1992 and 1996.
ClandestineRadio.com, a website which monitors underground and anti-government radio stations in countries throughout the world, credits the Rendon Group with 'designing and supervising' the Iraqi Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) and Radio Hurriah, which began broadcasting Iraqi opposition propaganda in January 1992 from a US government transmitter in Kuwait. According to a September 1996 article in Time magazine, six CIA case officers supervised the IBC's 11 hours of daily programming and Iraqi National Congress activities in the Iraqi Kurdistan city of Arbil. These activities came to an abrupt end on August 31, 1996, when the Iraqi army invaded Arbil and executed all but 12 out of 100 IBC staff workers along with about 100 members of the Iraqi National Congress.
According to a Harvard graduate student from Iraq who helped translate some of the radio broadcasts into Arabic, the program was poorly run. 'No one in-house spoke a word of Arabic,' he says. 'They thought I was mocking Saddam, but for all they knew I could have been lambasting the US government.' The scripts, he adds, were often ill conceived. 'Who in Iraq is going to think it's funny to poke fun at Saddam's mustache,' the student notes, 'when the vast majority of Iraqi men themselves have mustaches?'
Franklin Foer reported in The New Republic that Rendon has been dogged throughout his career 'by complaints of profligate spending'—even charged with being the PR equivalent of the Pentagon's $400 toilet seat. In 1995 CIA accountants demanded an audit of his work. As ABC reported in 1998, Rendon's own records show he spent more than $23 million in the first year of his contract to work with the INC. Several of his operatives in London earned more than the director of Central Intelligence—about $19,000 per month. Rendon shot across the Atlantic on the Concorde, while his subordinates flew on open business-class tickets. According to one of those subordinates, 'There was no incentive for Rendon to hold down costs.' The Agency's inspector general found no evidence of fraud.
Writing in the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh said the Rendon Group was 'paid close to a hundred million dollars by the CIA' for its work with the INC. Journalist James Bamford reported in the Rolling Stone that Rendon came up with the name for the INC and helped install Ahmad Chalabi as its head. Francis Brooke, adviser to Ahmed Chalabi and former employee of The Rendon Group said, 'Those arguments are false. Mr. Rendon was a consultant. The Iraqi National Congress was founded independently by Dr. Chalabi, and Mr. Rendon provided consulting services during that period.' […]
Afghanistan
The San Jose Mercury News reported in October 2001 that the Pentagon had awarded Rendon a four-month, $397,000 contract to handle PR aspects of U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan. Rendon and Pentagon officials declined to discuss details of the firm's work, which included monitoring international news media, conducting focus groups and recommending 'ways the US military can counter disinformation and improve its own public communications.' All of which can be found in public Contracts between The Rendon Group and the Department of Defense.
The New York Times reported in February 2002 that the Pentagon was consulting the Rendon Group to assist its new information operations agency, the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) Of which it only consulted The Rendon Group. However, the OSI was publicly disbanded following a backlash when Pentagon officials said the new office would engage in 'black' disinformation campaigns of which The Rendon Group was not part.
In December, 2005, the Chicago Tribune reported that the Rendon Group received $1.4 million in 2004 to help Afghan President Hamid Karzai with media relations. According to the paper, after seven months Karzai and Zalmay Khalilzad, then the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, were ready to get rid of the company. Despite the lack of support from Karzai and the ambassador, the company received another $3.9 million funded by the Pentagon to create a media team for anti-drug programs. The article quoted Jeff Raleigh, who helped oversee Rendon in Kabul for the U.S. Embassy, as saying the contract was 'a rip-off of the U.S taxpayer.' Later Jeff Raleigh's Afghan supervisor said Jeff wanted full control of The Rendon Group and was out of his bound. Furthermore the same official, Ambassador Daod, in a signed letter said that The Rendon Group did a great job and really helped his office. Advocates say Rendon helps fight propaganda from Islamic fundamentalists. Critics say the Pentagon's use of media firms such as Rendon blurs the line between public relations and propaganda.
In late August 2009 Stars and Stripes reported that the Rendon Group had been employed by the United States Department of Defense to profile journalists who wrote about the war on terror. Stars and Stripes reported that Rendon's profiles included recommendations on how to 'neutralize' coverage the DoD would regard as negative. According to the General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, Aidan White:
It strips away any pretense that the army is interested in helping journalists to work freely. It suggests they are more interested in propaganda than honest reporting
However, the military said it did not use the ratings to manipulate coverage or deny reporters access to cover the war. Following the criticism the Department of Defense terminated Rendon Group's contract, saying, 'The Bagram Regional Contracting Center intends to execute a termination of the media analyst contract... for the convenience of the U.S. government,' military spokeswoman Lieutenant Commander Christine Sidenstricker said. The contract was not canceled due to fault on behalf of The Rendon Group.
With The Rendon Group, our clients benefit from the sophistication of our relationships, products, and trusted expertise from 30 years of experience working on complex global communications challenges in over 98 countries.
TRG clients depend on our cultural acumen and geopolitical savvy in a wide array of cultural and political environments from the austere to the modern. We work end-to-end campaigns for our customers and are equipped to achieve every strategic effect possible. We have planned and executed complex, global, multi-channel campaigns for dozens of clients.
Our body of experiential knowledge is based on three decades of executing communications programs, informed by research into new innovations at the edge of the influence spectrum.
Our strategies are game-changing. We have influenced outcomes in our clients’ most critical operations and helped fulfill their vision and capacity with regard to strategic communications.
Our strategists maintain vigilance on behalf of our customers, offering an unparalleled level of situational awareness and insight. We deliver real-time information, the most up-to-date analysis, and targeted strategies for executing high-impact campaigns.
Our monitoring and measurement techniques, analytical tools, in-house talent, and global network have consistently delivered transformative outcomes for our clients.
Our Boston, Massachusetts office features an in-house commercial production facility and an award-winning multimedia production team.
For more information: Services. Contact. Work With Us.
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- See more at: http://www.rendon.com/about/#sthash.0g7EPR0f.dpuf En:
Terwijl de westerse mainstream pers braaf de door The Rendon Group verzonnen propaganda doorgaf en de onnozelste en meest gehersenspoelde collega's van mij werkelijk meenden dat de Iraqi National Congress spontaan was ontstaan, (zoals ze nu ervan overtuigd zijn dat de Oekraïense oppositie spontaan is ontstaan en niet met miljarden dollars van het Westen kunstmatig is geschapen), bleek de werkelijkheid ook hier weer volstrekt anders:
The Iraqi National Congress is an umbrella Iraqi opposition group led by Ahmed Chalabi. It was formed with the aid and direction of the United States government following the Gulf War, for the purpose of fomenting the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
History
INC was set up following the Persian Gulf War to coordinate the activities of various anti-Saddam groups. Then President George Bush signed a presidential finding directing the Central Intelligence Agency to create conditions for Saddam's removal in May 1991. Coordinating anti-Saddam groups was an important element of this strategy. The name INC was reportedly coined by public relations expert John Rendon (of the Rendon Group agency) and the group was funded by the United States. The group received millions in covert funding in the 1990s, and then about $8 million a year in overt funding after the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998. The deep involvement of the American CIA in the creation and early funding of the INC in its early years led many to consider the group a 'creation of the CIA' rather than an organ of genuine Iraqi opposition.
INC represented the first major attempt by opponents of Saddam to join forces, bringing together Kurds, Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs (both Islamic fundamentalist and secular), as well as democrats, monarchists, nationalists and ex-military officers. In June 1992, nearly 200 delegates from dozens of opposition groups met in Vienna, along with Iraq's two main Kurdish militias, the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). In October 1992, major Shi'ite groups, including the SCIRI and al-Dawa, came into the coalition and INC held a pivotal meeting in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, choosing a Leadership Council and a 26-member executive council. The leaders included monarchist Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein that called for the return of a Constitutional Monarchy for Iraq, moderate Shi'ite Muslim cleric Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum; ex-Iraqi general Hasan Naqib; and Masud Barzani. Ahmed Chalabi, a secular Shi'ite Iraqi-American and mathematician by training, became head of the group.
INC's political platform promised 'human rights and rule of law within a constitutional, democratic, and pluralistic Iraq'; preservation of Iraq's territorial integrity, and complete compliance with international law, including United Nations resolutions relating to Iraq.
Differences within INC eventually led to its virtual collapse. In May 1994, the two main Kurdish parties began fighting with each other over territory and other issues. As a result of the growing difficulties within INC, the United States began seeking out other opponents who could threaten the Iraqi regime, such as the Iraqi National Accord (INA), headed by Iyad Allawi. The rivalries between the Kurdish parties prompted the KDP to seek armed support from Saddam Hussein for its capture of the town of Arbil from rival PUK. Iraq took advantage of the request by launching a military strike in which 200 opposition members were executed and as many as 2,000 arrested. 650 oppositionists (mostly INC) were evacuated and resettled in the United States under parole authority of the US Attorney General. INC played a central role in the truce negotiations between KDP and PUK.
INC was subsequently plagued by dissociation of many of its constituent groups from the INC umbrella, a cutoff of funds from its international backers (including the United States), and continued pressure from Iraqi intelligence services especially after a failed 1995 coup attempt. In 1998, however, the US Congress authorized $97 million in U.S. military aid for Iraqi opposition via the Iraq Liberation Act, intended primarily for INC. (Katzman, 1998).
In March 2002, Seymour M. Hersh reported in The New Yorker that 'exile groups supported by the INC have been conducting sabotage operations inside Iraq, targeting oil refineries and other installations. The latest attack took place on January 23rd, an INC official told me, when missiles fired by what he termed ''indigenous dissidents'' struck the large Baiji refinery complex, north of Baghdad, triggering a fire that blazed for more than twelve hours.' However, Hersh added, 'A dispute over Chalabi's potential usefulness preoccupies the bureaucracy, as the civilian leadership in The Pentagon continues to insist that only the INC can lead the opposition. At the same time, a former Administration official told me, ''Everybody but the Pentagon and the office of the Vice President wants to ditch the INC.'' INC's critics note that Chalabi, despite years of effort and millions of dollars in American aid, is intensely unpopular today among many elements in Iraq. ''If Chalabi is the guy, there could be a civil war after Saddam's overthrow,'' one former C.I.A. operative told me. A former high-level Pentagon official added, ''There are some things that a President can't order up, and an internal opposition is one.'" (Hersh, 2002).
Notwithstanding these concerns, Hersh reported that 'INC supporters in and around the Administration, including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, believe, like Chalabi, that any show of force would immediately trigger a revolt against Saddam within Iraq, and that it would quickly expand.' In December 2002, Robert Dreyfuss reported that the administration of George W. Bush actually preferred INC-supplied analyses of Iraq over analyses provided by long-standing analysts within the CIA. 'Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency,' he wrote. 'The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq... Morale inside the U.S. national-security apparatus is said to be low, with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push for war.' Much of the pro-war faction's information came from INC, even though 'most Iraq hands with long experience in dealing with that country's tumultuous politics consider the INC's intelligence-gathering abilities to be nearly nil... The Pentagon's critics are appalled that intelligence provided by the INC might shape U.S. decisions about going to war against Baghdad. At the CIA and at the State Department, Ahmed Chalabi, the INC's leader, is viewed as the ineffectual head of a self-inflated and corrupt organization skilled at lobbying and public relations, but not much else.'
'The [INC's] intelligence isn't reliable at all,' said Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior CIA official and counterterrorism expert. "Much of it is propaganda. Much of it is telling the Defense Department what they want to hear. And much of it is used to support Chalabi's own presidential ambitions. They make no distinction between intelligence and propaganda, using alleged informants and defectors who say what Chalabi wants them to say, [creating] cooked information that goes right into presidential and vice-presidential speeches." (Dreyfuss, December 2002). Chalabi received training in television presentation techniques from the Irish scriptwriter Eoghan Harris prior to the invasion of Iraq.
In February 2003, as the Bush administration neared the end of its preparations for war, an internal fight erupted over INC's plan to actually become the government of Iraq after the U.S. invasion. Chalabi wanted to 'declare a provisional government when the war starts,' a plan that 'alienated some of Mr. Chalabi's most enthusiastic backers in the Pentagon and in Congress, who fear the announcement of a provisional government made up of exiles would split anti-Saddam sentiment inside Iraq.' (Borger, et al., 2003) Eventually a governing council, including Chalabi was set up, but when it came time to choose an interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, head of rival Iraqi National Accord, was chosen.
In May 2004, the United States military raided the residences of Iraqi National Congress members now living in Iraq. It had been announced on May 18 that the Pentagon had stopped sending funding to INC, which had averaged about $340,000 per month for intelligence gathered by the organization. It is unclear what the military forces were seeking, although a spokesman for Ahmed Chalabi said Chalabi had been held at gunpoint and told to accept concessions then being put in place by the United States in preparation for a transfer of sovereignty on June 30, 2004. Chalabi had been a critic of the transfer, saying that the U.S. retained too much power.
In the lead up to the January 2005 Iraqi election INC joined the United Iraqi Alliance coalition of mainly Shi'ite groups as Chalabi reinvented himself as a sharp critic of the occupation, aligning himself with Muqtada al-Sadr. Chalabi was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister in the transitional government, and INC member Ali Allawi (the cousin of Iyad Allawi, and incidentally nephew of Chalabi) became Minister of Finance.
In preparation for the December 2005 Iraqi election, INC broke with the United Iraqi Alliance and formed its own multi-ethnic coalition, the National Congress Coalition. It did not win any seats in the election.
De stoottroepen van de -- door het Westen gesteunde -- Oekraïense oppositie. Dit wordt verzwegen door de westerse mainstream media. Ook hier speelt de westerse propaganda een doorslaggevende rol.
Fine Line Seen in U.S. Spying on Companies
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has never said what it was seeking when it invaded the computers of Petrobras, Brazil’s huge national oil company, but angry Brazilians have guesses: the company’s troves of data on Brazil’s offshore oil reserves, or perhaps its plans for allocating licenses for exploration to foreign companies.
Nor has the N.S.A. said what it intended when it got deep into the computer systems of China Telecom, one of the largest providers of mobile phone and Internet services in Chinese cities. But documents released by Edward J. Snowden, the former agency contractor now in exile in Russia, leave little doubt that the main goal was to learn about Chinese military units, whose members cannot resist texting on commercial networks.
The agency’s interest in Huawei, the giant Chinese maker of Internet switching equipment, and Pacnet, the Hong Kong-based operator of undersea fiber optic cables, is more obvious: Once inside those companies’ proprietary technology, the N.S.A. would have access to millions of daily conversations and emails that never touch American shores.
Then there is Joaquín Almunia, the antitrust commissioner of the European Commission. He runs no company, but has punished many, including Microsoft and Intel, and just reached a tentative accord with Google that will greatly change how it operates in Europe.
In each of these cases, American officials insist, when speaking off the record, that the United States was never acting on behalf of specific American companies. But the government does not deny it routinely spies to advance American economic advantage, which is part of its broad definition of how it protects American national security. In short, the officials say, while the N.S.A. cannot spy on Airbus and give the results to Boeing, it is free to spy on European or Asian trade negotiators and use the results to help American trade officials — and, by extension, the American industries and workers they are trying to bolster.
Now, every one of the examples of N.S.A. spying on corporations around the world is becoming Exhibit A in China’s argument that by indicting five members of the People’s Liberation Army, the Obama administration is giving new meaning to capitalistic hypocrisy. In the Chinese view, the United States has designed its own system of rules about what constitutes “legal” spying and what is illegal.
That definition, the Chinese contend, is intended to benefit an American economy built around the sanctity of intellectual property belonging to private firms. And, in their mind, it is also designed to give the N.S.A. the broadest possible rights to intercept phone calls or email messages of state-owned companies from China to Saudi Arabia, or even private firms that are involved in activities the United States considers vital to its national security, with no regard to local laws. The N.S.A. says it observes American law around the globe, but admits that local laws are no obstacle to its operations.
“China demands that the U.S. give it a clear explanation of its cybertheft, bugging and monitoring activities, and immediately stop such activity,” the Chinese Defense Ministry said in a statement released on Tuesday. It was part of a broad Chinese effort to equate what China’s Unit 61398 does — thecyberwar operation named in the indictment of five unit members that was announced Monday — with what the N.S.A. does.
Petrobras is a case in point. In the American view, Brazilian energy policy is made inside the state-run company, which is indistinguishable from the government. Thus, under the same rationale that the United States intercepted the phone calls of the country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, it had the authority, as a collector of foreign intelligence, to delve inside the company. Ms. Rousseff, denouncing the N.S.A. at the United Nations last September, said that the agency’s activities amounted to “a breach of international law and an affront” to Brazil’s sovereignty.
In fact, state-run oil companies are a fascination to the N.S.A. just as American high-tech firms are a Chinese obsession. State oil companies in Saudi Arabia, Africa, Iran and Mexico have often been intelligence targets for the United States. American officials say that digging inside corporations for insights into economic policy is different from actually stealing corporate secrets.
“What we do not do, as we have said many times,” James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, said after some of the initial N.S.A. revelations last year, “is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line.”
One reason for that policy, officials say, is that unlike the Chinese they would not know which companies to help: Apple but not Dell? Google but not Yahoo?
It is unclear what, if anything, those companies gleaned from American officials who had access to the resulting intelligence. But former intelligence officials say the companies are walled off from any intelligence that might help them compete.
American officials sometimes dig into corporations because they are suspected to be witting or unwitting suppliers of technology to the North Koreans or the Iranians. Siemens, the German telecommunications firm, was the chief supplier of the factory controllers that ran the centrifuges in Iran’s main nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz. The Stuxnet computer worm, designed by the United States and Israel, was designed to attack Siemens equipment — and it has never been clear whether the company knew that its machines were under American and Israeli attack. But in that case, American officials could argue that national security, not corporate competitiveness, was the goal.
In contrast, when Unit 61398 went after Westinghouse and Alcoa, it was to steal trade secrets and strategies to enter the Chinese market.
But other elements of the indictment, some outside experts say, could give the Chinese the opportunity to turn the rationale of the Justice Department against its own government. Some of the supposed Chinese online espionage against the United Steelworkers union and a solar energy firm, SolarWorld, appeared intended to gain intelligence about trade complaints.
Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who served in the Justice Department under the George W. Bush administration, wrote on the Lawfare blog on Tuesday that that “sounds a lot like the kind of cybersnooping on firms that the United States does.”
Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting from New York and James Glanz from Washington.
Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting from New York and James Glanz from Washington.
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