DE ANTI-RUSLAND PROPAGANDA VAN DE MAINSTREAM MEDIA 11

Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy that ‘the successor to politics will be propaganda’ has happened. Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the U.S. and Britain.

On matters of war and peace, ministerial deceit is reported as news. Inconvenient facts are censored, demons are nurtured. The model is corporate spin, the currency of the age,

aldus één van ’s werelds bekendste cineasten, de van origine Australische journalist John Pilger, op donderdag 17 februari 2022, een dag nadat de Russische strijdkrachten Oekraïne zouden zijn binnengevallen, althans zo luidde de voorspelling van dezelfde Amerikaanse inlichtingendiensten die destijds logen dat Irak over massavernietigingswapens beschikte. Opnieuw herhaalt de voltallige westerse mainstream-pers de leugens van haar aantoonbaar onbetrouwbare bronnen. En dit:   

more than a century since Edward Bernays, the father of spin, invented ‘public relations’ as a cover for war propaganda. What is new is the virtual elimination of dissent in the mainstream,

oftewel:

independent journalists and whistle blowers, the honest mavericks to whom media organizations once gave space, often with pride. The space has been abolished.

The war hysteria that has rolled in like a tidal wave in recent weeks and months is the most striking example. Known by its jargon, ‘shaping the narrative,’ much if not most of it is pure propaganda.’

Deze absurde werkelijkheid voltrekt zich nog geen drie jaar nadat de toenmalige Amerikaanse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, Mike Pompeo, tegenover een zaal vol studenten lachend had verklaard:

I was the CIA director, we lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPt-zXn05ac  

Als gevolg van de ‘conspiracy of silence’ verzwijgt de polderpers ‘inconvenient facts’ die de officiële lezing dat Rusland elk moment Oekraïne zal binnenvallen, onderuit haalt, terwijl de VS doorgaat met het overvliegen van militairen naar Polen en het leveren van oorlogstuig aan Kiev. Het wachten is op een ‘false flag-operation,’ gepland door de CIA, in een poging Moskou te provoceren om het buurland binnen te vallen. Daarbij wordt de elite gesteund door de nauwe banden tussen toonaangevende journalisten en de CIA.  Zo is bekend dat in:

the early years of the Cold War, efforts were made by the United States Government to use mass media to influence public opinion internationally. After the United States Senate Watergate Committee in 1973 uncovered domestic surveillance abuses directed by the Executive branch of the United States government and The New York Times in 1974 published an article by Seymour Hersh claiming the CIA had violated its charter by spying on anti-war activists, former CIA officials and some lawmakers called for a congressional inquiry that became known as the Church Committee. Published in 1976, the Committee's report confirmed some earlier stories that charged that the CIA had cultivated relationships with private institutions, including the press. Without identifying individuals by name, the Church Committee stated that it found fifty journalists who had official, but secret, relationships with the CIA. In a 1977 Rolling Stone magazine article, ‘The CIA and the Media,’ reporter Carl Bernstein (die samen met Bob Woodward de Watergate Affaire blootlegde. svh) expanded upon the Church Committee's report and said that around 400 press members were considered intelligence assets by the CIA, including New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, columnist and political analyst Stewart Alsop and Time magazine. Bernstein documented the way in which overseas branch's of major US news agencies had for many years served as the ‘eyes and ears’ of Operation Mockingbird, which functioned to disseminate CIA propaganda through domestic US media.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird 

Gezien het feit dat de polderpers The New York Times als toonaangevend beschouwt, kan worden gesteld dat de CIA-propaganda door de Nederlandse ‘corporate press’ -- in handen van twee schatrijke Belgische families -- wordt verspreid. Dit verklaart tevens waarom de berichtgeving in alle mainstream-media gelijkluidend is. Alle berichtgeving komt immers uit dezelfde propagandabron. Dissidente zienswijzen en afwijkende feiten worden door de commerciële media stelselmatig verzwegen, met als gevolg dat wereldwijd het vertrouwen in de massamedia blijft afnemen. Al was het maar omdat, zoals president Abraham Lincoln eens opmerkte: ‘You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.’ Bovendien krijgt zelfs het volk van het land dat sinds zijn onafhankelijkheid in 1776 ruim 93 procent van zijn bestaan in oorlog is, tenslotte genoeg van het voortdurende, biljoenen verslindende, massale geweld dat ten koste gaat van onderwijs, gezondheidszorg, volkshuisvesting, cultuur, sociale uitkeringen, infrastructurele projecten, etcetera. Maar op den duur werkt de propaganda van zelfs Thomas Friedman niet meer, de beroemdste opiniemaker van The New York Times, bekend vanwege uitspraken als:

We needed to go over there, basically, and take out a very big stick right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble… What they [Muslims] needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad and basically saying ‘Which part of this sentence don't you understand? You don't think we care about our open society? You think this bubble fantasy, we're just going to let it grow? Well, suck on this!’ That, Charlie, is what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia! It was part of that bubble. We could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.

Al een jaar na deze opmerking uit 2003 werd duidelijk dat de VS de oorlog tegen Irak niet zou winnen, en dat tenslotte het 2 biljoen dollar kostende geweld plus de 4,431 gesneuvelde Amerikanen een begin maakten aan het verlies van geloofwaardigheid en de ineenstorting van de Amerikaanse hegemonie. ‘Well Suck on this!’ En dit allemaal door de leugens van de CIA en andere misdadige Amerikaanse inlichtingendiensten. Op die manier werden alleen de belangen gediend van het militair-industrieel complex gediend, waarvoor president Eisenhower al in 1961 had gewaarschuwd, en inmiddels is uitgegroeid tot een staat in de staat, doordat: 

almost every president, almost every Congress, and almost every director of central intelligence since the 1960s has proved incapable of grasping the mechanics of the CIA. Most have left the agency in worse shape than they found it,

aldus de voormalige New York Times onderzoeksjournalist Tim Weiner, wiens werk over de zogeheten National Security de Pulitzer Prize ontving. In zijn ook in het Nederlands vertaalde boek Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2008), beschrijft hij 720 pagina’s lang het spoor van vernieling dat de CIA door de hele wereld trekt. De recensent van The Washington Times kwalificeerde het boek als een:

vernietigend rapport van een inlichtingendienst die meestal faalde bij het voorspellen van belangrijke politieke gebeurtenissen in de wereld, mensenrechten schond, Amerikanen bespioneerde, moordaanslagen op buitenlandse regeringsleiders beraamde en geld stak in klungelige doofpot-acties waardoor de CIA niet toekwam aan zijn eigenlijke werk, het verzamelen en analyseren van informatie.

De titel is afkomstig van president Eisenhower, die na acht jaar presidentschap ‘called into his office, the former legendary OSS officer and director of the CIA Allen Dulles, and said to him point-blank. ‘After eight years you have left me, a legacy of ashes.’

Tim Weiner, die zich gedwongen zag bij The New York Times op te stappen, omdat deze krant na 11 september 2001 zijn gedocumenteerde artikelen begon te saboteren, zet in zijn boek uiteen dat:

Legacy of Ashes sets out to show how it has come to pass that the United States now lacks the intelligence it will need in the years ahead. It is drawn from the words, the ideas, and the deeds set forth in the files of the American national-security establishment. They record what our leaders really said, really wanted, and really did when they projected power abroad. This book is based on my reading of more than fifty thousand documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA, the White House, and the State Department; more than two thousand oral histories of American intelligence officers, soldiers, and diplomats; and more than three hundred interviews conducted since 1987 with CIA officers and veterans, including ten directors of central intelligence. Extensive endnotes amplify the text.

This book is on the record — no anonymous sources, no blind quotations, no hearsay. It is the first history of the CIA compiled entirely from firsthand reporting and primary documents. It is, by its nature, incomplete: no president, no director of central intelligence, and certainly no outsider can know everything about the agency. What I have written here is not the whole truth, but to the best of my ability, it is nothing but the truth.

Desondanks blijven mijn Nederlandse mainstream-collega’s de aantoonbare aperte leugens en de oncontroleerbare beweringen herhalen over bijvoorbeeld Rusland, met alle desastreuze gevolgen van dien, terwijl toch: 

A nation that wants to project its power beyond its borders needs to see over the horizon, to know what is coming, to prevent attacks against its people. It must anticipate surprise. Without a strong, smart, sharp intelligence service, presidents and generals alike can become blind and crippled. But throughout its history as a superpower, the United States has not had such a service.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16435085&t=1628423711940 

Op zijn beurt beschrijft de Amerikaanse mensenrechtenadvocaat Dan Kovalik in zijn boek The Plot To Scapegoat Russia. How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Russia (2017) het volgende: 

The Russians are coming… again. It seems  that al-Qaeda, ISIS, North Koreans, Mexican ‘bad hombres,’ and various other bogeyman were insufficient to the task of terrifying Americans. So now the US war machine — that vast complex of weapons manufacturers, Wall Street speculators, saber-rattling Washington politicians, armchair generals, and the media industry that thrives on boom and bang (or the ‘beautiful pictures of our fearsome armaments’ in the unforgettable words of MSNBC’s Brian Williams) — has revived the tried and true Red Scare. Day after day, night after night, the US citizenry is bombarded with scare stories about the evil machinations of Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin henchmen (handlangers. svh). How they stole our democracy and are scheming to conquer the entire NATO alliance. How they are building a military machine and nuclear arsenal that threaten to eclipse our own. How they are subverting the global free press with its low-ratings Russia Today network and army of hackers and trolls. How they are blocking peace in the Middle East with their machinations in Syria. 

This massive anti-Russian propaganda campaign is one of the biggest fake news operations in history. And we have had some colossal ones, dating back to the days of the Spanish American War, when newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst instructed artist Frederic Remington to help him fabricate a clash of forces that did not exist: ‘You furnish the pictures and I will furnish the war.’ 

Ever since World War I, war has been America’s lucrative ‘racket,’ in the mordant (scherpe. svh) observation of Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, the most decorated marine of his day. The country’s economic engine runs on blood and oil. Without the constant specter of a foreign enemy there is no American prosperity. 

Al in 1957 waarschuwde één van de meest gerespecteerde 5 sterren-generaals, Douglas MacArthur, die ‘een belangrijke rol in de Eerste, en de Tweede Wereldoorlog en de Koreaanse Oorlog speelde’: 

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency... Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.

In 1991 concludeerde de Amerikaanse voormalige minister van Justitie, Ramsey Clark, in zijn boek The Fire This Time — US War Crimes in the Gulf dat ‘US Foreign Policy is the Greatest Crime Since WWII.’ Clark wees op specifieke misdaden in tientallen landen die sinds de Tweede Wereldoorlog tijdens Amerikaanse invasies werden gebombardeerd. Naar aanleiding van de bombardementen op Irak in 1991 schreef Clark dat de Amerikaanse agressie een niet in te schatten niveau van ‘misery for the world’ had gecreëerd, en dat ‘the poor of the planet [are] made poorer, dominated and exploited by the foreign policies of the U.S. and its rich allies,’ en dat de Amerikaanse inval in Irak een ‘agressieoorlog’ was, ‘the supreme international crime’ volgens de rechters die in 1946 in Neurenberg de overgrote meerderheid van de nazi-top ter dood veroordeelde.

Vanzelfsprekend zal de lezer deze dissidente insiders nooit aantreffen in de oorlogspropaganda van de polderpers. Wat zij tevens verzwijgt is dat de Amerikaanse oorlogen, geen enkele uitgezonderd, de belangen dienen van de elite in Washington en op Wall Street. Dat stellen al langere tijd zelfs hoge Amerikaanse militairen als generaal Smedley Butler, die tijdens zijn langdurige ‘career as a Marine, participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, and Central America; the Caribbean during the Banana Wars,’ om naderhand in zijn boek ‘War Is A Racket’ (1935) te schrijven:

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

Uit ervaring wist hij dat: 

War is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

Maar zelfs deze waarheden uit de praktijk blijken onvoldoende te zijn om de verblinding van de machthebbers en hun commerciële pers te genezen. Wie betaalt de prijs voor al dit geweld? In elk geval niet de politici die jongeren de dood insturen, evenmin de ‘vrije pers’ die de militaire waanzin rechtvaardigt, en ook niet de financiële macht die de oorlogsleningen verstrekt, en een vermogen eraan verdient. Maar wie dan wel?:

Butler went on to describe who bears the costs of war — the men who die or return home with wrecked lives, and the taxpayers — and who profits — the companies that sell goods and services to the military. (The term ‘military-industrial complex’ would not gain prominence until 1961, when Dwight Eisenhower used it in his presidential farewell address. See Nick Turse’s book The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.)

Writing in the mid-1930s, Butler foresaw a U.S. war with Japan to protect trade with China and investments in the Philippines, and declared that it would make no sense to the average American:

‘We would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war — a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit — fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?

What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?’

Noting that ‘until 1898 [and the Spanish-American War] we didn’t own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America,’ he observed that after becoming an expansionist world power, the U.S. government’s debt swelled 25 times and ‘we forgot George Washington’s warning about “entangling alliances.” We went to war. We acquired outside territory.’

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people — who do not profit.

Butler detailed the huge profits of companies that sold goods to the government during past wars and interventions and the banks that made money handling the government’s bonds.

The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits — ah! that is another matter — twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred percent — the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.

Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and ‘we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,’ but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket — and are safely pocketed.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40954.htm 

Op het eenvoudig te signaleren feit dat oorlog alleen een ‘racket’ dient, een kliek schatrijke parasieten, rust een taboe, geen enkele mainstream-journalist kan het zich permitteren dit feit te melden, laat staan een uitgebreid onderzoek te te publiceren. Het zou het einde betekenen van zijn carrière. En dus houdt hij/zij zich aan de ongeschreven, maar wel diep geïnternaliseerde regels van de neoliberale journalistiek. Meer daarover later.