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INFORMATION THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA USUALLY IGNORES
dinsdag 24 maart 2020
Geert Mak's 'Grote verwachtingen' 41
We will know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false,
aldus in 1981 de toenmalige CIA-Directeur Bill Casey tijdens een bijeenkomst met president Ronald Reagan.
President Ronald Reagan with CIA Director William J. Casey
In onder andere de Britse Independent van 23 maart 2017 verkondigde opiniemaker Ian Buruma dat de tot Amerikaan genaturaliseerde multi-miljardair George Soros met recht ‘the personification of “the West”’ kan worden genoemd, en wel omdat deze in Frankrijk wegens handel met voorkennis veroordeelde beursspeculant ‘rich, cosmopolitan, Jewish, and a liberal’is. Het is een opmerkelijke identiteitsbeschrijving van ‘het Westen,’ en roept tevens de vraag op: wat zijn de honderden miljoenen bewoners van ‘het Westen’ die niet ‘rijk, kosmopolitisch, Joods, en liberaal’ zijn? Van wat zijn zij de ‘personificatie’? Buruma zwijgt hierover. Wel beweert mijn oude vriend dat ‘nativists,’ dus mensen die van mening zijn dat de belangen van de hier geboren burgers boven die van immigranten gaan, plus ‘anti-Semites’ Soros ‘haten’ omdat hij ‘rijk, kosmopolitisch, Joods, en liberaal’ is. Volgens de definitie van Buruma behoort de in Hongarije geboren Soros allereerst tot het ‘Joodse volk,’ vandaar de hoofdletter, maar het problematische hieraan is dat alleen voor de nazi’s en de zionisten een jood buiten Israel altijd een ‘Jood’ blijft. Zij gaan ervan uit dat het iets biologisch is dat een jood tot ‘Jood’ maakt. Maar in werkelijkheid behoort bijvoorbeeld een joodse Nederlander allereerst tot het Nederlandse volk, en heeft hij als zodanig dezelfde rechten en plichten als Ian Buruma en ik. Nog afgezien hiervan blijft het tendentieus dat gemarginaliseerde westerlingen die al dan niet de dupe zijn van de parasitaire rijke, 'kosmopolitische' elite, zich uitgevend voor ‘liberaal,’ ineens op één hoop worden geveegd met ‘anti-Semieten.’ Het criminaliseren van dissidenten, het aanwijzen van Het Kwaad, is een oude en beproefde techniek van de totalitaire macht, zoals Hannah Arendt zo overtuigend heeft aangetoond in haar boek The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Daarom is het interessant om te onderzoeken wie George Soros precies is, en wat deze broodheer van Ian Buruma precies doet. Op ondermeer de website van het Ron Paul Institute van 31 december 2015 plaatste Frederick William Engdahl, een 75-jarige Amerikaanse ‘analyst of international geopolitics and economics’ Soros’ activiteiten in een bredere context. Onder de kop: ‘Soros Plays Both Ends in Syria Refugee Chaos’ schreef hij:
Since John D. Rockefeller was advised to protect his wealth from government taxation by creating a tax-exempt philanthropic foundation in 1913, foundations have been used by American oligarchs to disguise a world of dirty deeds under the cover ‘doing good for mankind,’ known by the moniker (het begrip. svh) ‘philanthropy’ for mankind-loving.
No less the case is that of George Soros who likely has more tax-exempt foundations under his belt than anyone around. His Open Society foundations are in every country where Washington wants to put ‘their man’ in, or at least get someone out who doesn’t know how to read their music. They played a key role in regime change in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe after 1989. Now his foundations are up to their eyeballs in promoting propaganda serving the US-UK war agenda for destroying stability in Syria as they did in Libya three years ago, creating the current EU refugee crisis.
We should take a closer look at the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis wreaking such havoc and unrest across the EU, especially in Germany, the favored goal of most asylum seekers today. George Soros, today a naturalized American citizen, has just authored a six-point proposal telling the European Union on what they must do to manage the situation. It’s worth looking at in detail.
He begins by stating, ‘The EU needs a comprehensive plan to respond to the crisis, one that reasserts effective governance over the flows of asylum-seekers so that they take place in a safe, orderly way…’ He then says that, ‘First, the EU has to accept at least a million asylum-seekers annually for the foreseeable future.’
Soros does not elaborate where he pulled that figure from, nor does he discuss the role of other of his Soros-financed NGOs in Syria and elsewhere which manufacture faked propaganda to build a public sympathy lobby for a US and UK ‘No Fly Zone’ in Syria as was done to destroy Libya.
The American hedge fund speculator then adds, among his points to be implemented, a series of proposals that would consolidate a de facto supranational EU state apparatus under control of the faceless, unelected bureaucrats of the European Commission. The Soros proposals call for creating what amount to EU-issued refugee bonds. He states, ‘The EU should provide €15,000 ($16,800) per asylum-seeker for each of the first two years to help cover housing, health care, and education costs — and to make accepting refugees more appealing to member states. It can raise these funds by issuing long-term bonds using its largely untapped AAA borrowing capacity…’
That issuing comes to 30 billion euros at a time when most EU member states are struggling to deal with domestic economic crises. Soros is generous with other peoples’ money. The mention of the AAA bond rating is the rating of the legal entity named the European Union. Soros has maneuvered for years to try to get a centralized Brussels independent financial power that would take the last vestiges of national financial sovereignty away from Berlin, Paris, Rome and other EU states, part of a scheme to destroy the remains of the national borders and of the nation-state principles established at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years’ War.
George Soros has more ideas how to spend European citizens’ tax euros. He calls on the EU to cough up an added annual commitment to ‘frontline countries’ (Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan) of at least €8-10 billion annually. Then, insidiously, Soros declares, ‘Safe channels must be established for asylum-seekers, starting with getting them from Greece and Italy to their destination countries. This is very urgent in order to calm the panic.’
‘Destination Countries’
His use of the term ‘destination countries’ is very interesting. Today, by a huge margin that means the Federal Republic of Germany. Soros strategy is obviously to target Germany, especially, with a refugee flood.
It has gradually come out into the open that many of the refugees or asylum-seekers flooding into the EU since summer of 2015 have come in response to reading Twitter or Facebook social media portraying especially Germany as an arms-open, refugee-loving paradise where all their needs will be met.
How did word get out that Germany was the ‘in place’ for those in flight from Syria and other conflict areas? Vladimir Shalak at the Russian Academy of Sciences developed the Internet Content-Analysis System for Twitter (Scai4Twi). He made a study of over 19,000 refugees-related original tweets (retweets discounted). His study showed that the vast majority of the tweets name Germany as the most refugee-welcoming country in Europe.
Shalak’s study discovered that 93 percent of all tweets about Germany contained positive references to German hospitality and its refugee policy. Some samples of the Tweets:
• Germany Yes! Leftists spray graffiti on a train saying ‘Welcome, refugees’ in Arabic
• Lovely people — video of Germans welcoming Syrian refugees to their community
- Respect! Football fans saying ‘Welcome Refugees’ across stadiums in Germany.
- This Arabic Graffiti train is running in Dresden welcoming refugees: (ahlan wa sahlan – a warm welcome).
• ‘We love Germany!,’ cry relieved refugees at Munich railway station
• Thousands welcome refugees to Germany – Sky News Australia
• Wherever this German town is that welcomed a coach of Syrian refugees with welcome signs and flowers — thank you.
Now comes the real hammer. The vast majority of these ‘Germany welcomes refugee’ Tweets come not from Germany, but from the United States and from the UK, the two countries up to their necks in the bloody deeds of ISIS and Al Qaeda and countless other terror gangs rampaging across Syria the past four years.
Shalak analyzed 5,704 original tweets containing a ‘#RefugeesWelcome’ hashtag and a country name which welcomes them. It showed almost 80 percent of all Tweets claimed that Germany was the most-welcoming country in Europe. The second most welcoming country found was Austria with 12 percent. However, the study also found that those ‘Germany welcomes you’ Tweets did not originate from inside Germany. Over 40 percent of all the Tweets originated from the USA, UK or Australia. Only 6.4 percent originated inside Germany.
George Soros is also the Daddy Warbucks financing a new EU think-tank with the name European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). On the website of the ECFR is an editorial titled, ‘If Europe wants people to stop drowning it needs to let them fly.’ The Soros Think-Tank argues that the main reason migrants choose boats is EU Directive 51/2001/EC: ‘The EU directive was passed in 2001. Put simply, it states that carrier companies — whether airlines or ship lines — are responsible for ensuring that foreign nationals wishing to travel to the European Union have valid travel documents for their destination. If such travelers arrive in the EU and are turned away, the airlines are obligated to foot the bill for flying them home.’ In other words, ‘open the gates of heaven wider, dear Lord.’
Soros met de Republikeinse Havik John McCain.
Soros’ Syria NGOs Beat War Drums
The cynicism of the Soros call for the EU taxpayers to step up to the plate and accept millions of new refugees, to fly them in without papers, and more, is clear when we look at the same Soros-financed network of NGOs active in Syria trying to create the propaganda background to get acceptance of yet another US ‘No Fly Zone’ over Syria as was done against Iraq after 1991 and against Libya in 2012 to bomb those countries back to the stone age.
One of the key online advocates for a US-UK ‘No Fly Zone’ over Syria, something the Russian intervention since September 30 has de facto blocked, is an organization known as Avaaz. Avaaz was given initial financial support by Soros’ foundation in 2007 to promote key policies suitable to the US State Department. They cite Soros’ Open Society foundation as their foundation partner. Avaaz played a key role promoting the 2011 No Fly Zone in Libya that introduced a regime of terror and chaos in that once prosperous and stable African nation. Avaaz is now very actively promoting the same treatment for Syria.
Another Soros-financed NGO active demonizing the Assad government as cause of all atrocities in Syria and helping build public support for a war in Syria from the US and EU is Amnesty International. Suzanne Nossel, until 2013 the Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, came to the job from the US State Department where she was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, not exactly an unbiased agency in regard to Syria. As well, the Soros-financed Human Rights Watch has played a major role in falsely portraying ISIS and Al Qaeda civilian bombings and other atrocities as the work of the Assad regime, building support for military action from the US and EU.
The Middle East and other wars today including Ukraine are the product of the foreign policy doctrine set out in 1992 by then Defense Assistant Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the infamous Wolfowitz Doctrine that justifies ‘pre-emptive’ war, free from any oversight from the UN Security Council, against any nation or group of nations which threaten US ‘Sole Superpower’ domination. George Soros, the hedge fund speculator turned self-proclaimed philanthropist, and his tax-exempt foundations, are an integral part of that pre-emptive war machine. Now Soros lectures the EU countries, above all Germany, on how they should receive the human fallout from the wars he and his cronies in the US State Department have created. That’s real Chutzpah, or perhaps it is really hubris.
Reprinted with permission from New Eastern Outlook.
Ian Buruma zwijgt over dit alles. Deze informatie past niet in zijn rol als spreekbuis van de liberale macht, die Europa opriep een deel van het Amerikaanse ‘dirty work,’ op zich te nemen ‘and take the risk of being held accountable,’ voor de daaruit onvermijdelijk voortvloeiende oorlogsmisdaden en misdaden tegen de menselijkheid. Het journalistiek activisme van de westerse ‘vrije pers’ is keer op keer bereid om het onverdedigbare te verdedigen. Hetzelfde gaat op voor Soros’ politiek activisme, dat zich achter de schermen voltrekt. Zo nam Buruma's ‘personificatie van het Westen,’ in juli 2015 in het geheim contact op met de Griekse premier Alexis Tsipras. Zijn opdracht aan Tsipras was:
Fire Varoufakis! Europe cannot afford to have two open wounds at once — Greece and the Ukraine [where fierce fighting was taking place]. Athens must capitulate to Germany now so that Europe can dedicate itself to resolving Ukraine. For this Varoufakis must be removed.
Months later a further, bitter vindication (verweer. svh) arrived when the EU and the IMF announced that the same debt swaps and nominal income indexed bonds that I had been proposing for Greece would be used to restructure Ukraine’s public debt,
aldus de voormalige Griekse minister van Financiën Yanis Varoufakis in zijn boek Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment (2017). Oekraïne, het door en door corrupte land waarin Soros wilde investeren, werd geholpen ten koste van Griekenland, de bakermat van de westerse democratie. In hetzelfde 2015 waarin de multimiljardair eiste dat zijn tegenstander Varoufakis werd ontslagen, berichtte de financiële redactie van CNN onder de kop ‘George Soros: I may invest $1 billion in Ukraine,’ dat:
George Soros has long called for the West to pump billions into Ukraine. Now he says he's ready to walk the talk.
The veteran hedge fund investor told an Austrian newspaper he was prepared to invest $1 billion in the collapsing war-ravaged economy under certain circumstances.
‘There are concrete investment ideas, for example in agriculture and infrastructure projects. I would put in $1 billion,’ he told Der Standard. ‘This must generate a profit. My foundation would benefit from this, not me personally.’
The Hungarian-born billionaire said Europe and the U.S. must show strong political leadership over Ukraine — that would make it more attractive to private investors. The West could provide finance at European interest rates close to zero, for example.
A spokesman for Soros said his investment would depend on the West doing ‘whatever it takes’ to rescue Ukraine…
‘Ukraine is defending Europe's borders,’ Soros was quoted as saying. ‘But above all, the country is fighting for European values such as the rule of law and freedom. That is too often forgotten.’
Buruma schnabbelend voor de Open Society Foundation van Soros.
Zoals een kleine belegger aandelen in een bedrijf als een goede investering kan zien, zo kan een schatrijke beursspeculant een héél land een interessant investeringsobject achten. Natuurlijk zal hij zoiets niet aan de grote klok hangen, maar zal hij zijn begeerte naar nog meer financieel vermogen keurig verpakken in ‘filantropische’ bewoordingen als het verspreiden van de ‘rechtstaat, vrijheid, democratie, mensenrechten,’ en alle andere ‘waarden,’ die het Westen claimt te verdedigen, maar die het in de praktijk op grote schaal schendt zodra de geopolitieke, financiële en economische belangen van de westerse elites moeten expanderen. Welnu, Soros speculeert in en met landen, en wordt dan ook door Ian Buruma — regelmatig actief voor diens Open Society Foundations — geprezen als ‘de personificatie van “het Westen.”’ Maar dan wel het corrupteWesten, aangevoerd door wat oud-president Jimmy Carter een Amerikaanse ‘oligarchie’ noemt, die met ‘onbeperkte politieke omkoping’ een ‘complete subversion’ heeft teweeg gebracht ‘of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.’ Het is in toenemende mate een totalitair functionerend bestel dat door opportunistische propagandisten van het allooi Ian Buruma wordt gepropageerd. In tegenstelling tot hem ben ik geen betaalde opiniemaker, maar een onafhankelijke journalist, en ben door ervaring wijs geworden uiterst sceptisch over de ‘filantropische geaardheid’ van multi-miljardairs, ‘Joods’ of niet-joods. Een sigaar uit eigen doos presenteren, blijft immers bedrog. Kortom, professor Ian Buruma belazert de zaak wanneer hij Soros introduceert als een ‘filantroop’ die vanwege zijn exemplarische goedheid ‘de personificatie’ is van het gehele vrije ‘Westen.’ Nonsens. Soros is en blijft in werkelijkheid een uitgekookte multimiljardair die vooruitdenkt om op die manier zijn investeringen zo profijtelijk mogelijk te beleggen. En aldus profiteert zijn financieel imperium moeiteloos van wat zo fraai zijn ‘filantropie’heet. Voor niets gaat de zon op. De schatrijke Soros koopt politieke macht, net als alle westerse rijken dit doen, zeker sinds het neoliberalisme de kloof tussen arm en rijk wereldwijd vergroot. Het kopen van politieke macht is natuurlijk in strijd met de democratie, waarbij iedere burger in principe evenveel invloed op de koers van zijn samenleving zou moeten hebben. Het bekritiseren van de corrumpering van de parlementaire democratie heeft natuurlijk niets te maken met Buruma’s beschuldiging van ‘anti-Semitisme.’ Zijn suggestieve bewering dat dit wel het geval is, laat zien tot hoever Buruma bereid is te gaan om de belangen van zijn patroon George Soros te dienen. Hier is sprake van dezelfde intellectuele corruptie van mijn oude vriend als toen hij zijn lezers probeerde wijs te maken dat met het oog op ‘the end of the American empire… we should ready ourselves for a time when we might recall the American empire with fond nostalgia,’ daarbij bewust de miljoenen slachtoffers verzwijgend van de Amerikaanse terreur, terwijl bijvoorbeeld al op 3 oktober 1963 de Amerikaanse columnist Arthur Krock van The New York Times waarschuwde voor ‘The Intra-Administration War in Vietnam,’ die binnen een decennium ruim 3,4 miljoen doden veroorzaakte en nog meer geestelijk en lichamelijke verminkten, en de gevolgen van deze terreur nog steeds doorwerken. De gezaghebbende Krock (Pulitzer Prijs Winnaar, en ‘Dean of Washington newsmen.’) wees erop dat:
The Central Intelligence Agency is getting a very bad press in dispatches from Vietnam to American newspapers and in articles originating in Washington…
One reporter in this category is Richard Starnes of the Scripps-Howard newspapers. Today, under a Saigon dateline, he related that, ‘according to a high United States source here, twice the C.I.A. flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge… [and] in one instance frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought from Washington because the agency disagreed with it.’ Among the views attributed to United States officials on the scene, including one described as a ‘very high American official… who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy… are the following:
The C.I.A.'s growth was ‘likened to a malignancy (kwaadaardig gezwel. svh)’ which the ‘very high official was not sure even the White House could control… any longer.’ ‘If the United States ever experiences [an attempt at a coup to overthrow the Government] it will come from the C.I.A. and not the Pentagon.’ The agency ‘represents a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone.’
Anderhalve maand later werd president John Kennedy in Dallas doodgeschoten, een moord waarbij volgens kritische Amerikaanse onderzoekers de CIA betrokken was geweest. Hoe belangrijk de rol van de mainstream-media was bij het promoten van de officiële lezing, waarbij één man, Lee Harvey Oswald, de aanslag had gepleegd, blijkt uit het volgende verslag uit 2016 van James DiEugenio. Onder de kop ‘How CBS News Aided the JFK Cover-up’ schreef deze Amerikaanse onderzoeker en auteur:
With the Warren Report on JFK’s assassination under attack in the mid-1960s, there was a chance to correct the errors and reassess the findings, but CBS News intervened to silence the critics, reports
In the mid-1960s, amid growing skepticism about the Warren Commission’s lone-gunman findings on John F. Kennedy’s assassination, there was a struggle inside CBS News about whether to allow the critics a fair public hearing at the then-dominant news network. Some CBS producers pushed for a debate between believers and doubters and one even submitted a proposal to put the Warren Report ‘on trial,’ according to internal CBS documents.
But CBS executives, who were staunch supporters of the Warren findings and had personal ties to some commission members, spiked (verijdelen. svh) those plans and instead insisted on presenting a defense of the lone-gunman theory while dismissing doubts as baseless conspiracy theories, the documents show.
Though it may be hard to remember — amid today’s proliferation of cable channels and Internet sites — CBS, along with NBC and ABC, wielded powerful control over what the American people got to see, hear and take seriously in the 1960s. By slapping down any criticism of the Warren Commission, CBS executives effectively prevented the case surrounding the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy from ever receiving the full airing that it deserved.
Beyond that historical significance, the internal documents — compiled by onetime CBS News assistant producer Roger Feinman — show how a major mainstream news organization green-lights one approach to presenting sensitive national security news while blocking another. The documents also shed light on how senior news executives, who have bought into one interpretation of the facts, are highly resistant to revisit the evidence.
Hetzelfde verschijnsel, maar dan nog extremer, voltrekt zich nu met de MH17-affaire. Vanaf het allereerste begin gold voor de mainstream-media dat de Russen het gedaan hadden, en was de polderpers niet geïnteresseerd in informatie die van de officiële lezing afweek. De enige echt kritische volksvertegenwoordiger, Pieter Omtzigt van het CDA, zag zich zelfs genoodzaakt te stoppen met het MH17-dossier nadat NRC Handelsblad een hetze tegen hem was begonnen, dezelfde krant waarin opiniemaker Bas Heijne vier dagen na het neerstorten wist te suggereren dat de Russen de schuldigen waren. Hier neemt de commerciële pers zelf het voortouw om te zorgen dat elke afwijkende informatie ogenblikkelijk verdacht lijkt. De polderpers heeft geen CIA-directeur als Bill Casey nodig, die in 1981 tegenover president Reagan verklaarde dat ‘we will know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false,’want in Nederland gelden geen elementaire journalistieke regels als het zoeken naar de werkelijkheid, en het controleren van de macht. In Nederland bestaat ook geen parlement dat de corruptie van de ‘corporate press,’ of de nauwe banden tussen inlichtingendiensten en journalisten onderzoekt, zoals in de VS wel het geval is. Zo was ‘Bill Casey under investigation by Congress for being involved in a major disinformation plot involving the overthrow of Libya’s Qaddafi in 1981,’ and voor ‘arguing on the record that the CIA should have a legal right to spread disinformation via the mainstream news that same year.’ Het verspreiden van ‘Fake News’ is precies wat de CIA doet, zoals onder andere bij ‘False Flag Operations.’ In 1975 bekende de CIA tijdens ‘a House Intelligence Committee hearing on record that the CIA creates and uses disinformation against the American people.’
Question: ‘Do you have any people being paid by the CIA who are contributing to a major circulation — American journal?’
Answer: ‘We do have people who submit pieces to American journals.’
Question: ‘Do you have any people paid by the CIA who are working for television networks?’
Answer: ‘This I think gets into the kind of uh, getting into the details Mr. Chairman that I’d like to get into in executive session.’
U.S. Government Has Long Used Propaganda against the American People
Question: ‘Do you have any people being paid by the CIA who are contributing to the national news services — AP and UPI?’
Answer: ‘Well again, I think we’re getting into the kind of detail Mr. Chairman that I’d prefer to handle at executive session.’
Naar aanleiding hiervan schreef op 28 april 2015 de Amerikaanse onderzoekster en auteur Melissa Dykes:
It’s easy enough to read between the lines on the stuff that was saved for the executive session. Then-CBS President Sig Mickelson goes on to say that the relationships at CBS with the CIA were long established before he ever became president — and that’s just one example. Considering 90% of our media today has been consolidated into six major corporations over the past decade, it’s not hard to see that you shouldn’t readily believe everything you see, hear or read in the ‘news.’
‘I thought that it was a matter of real concern that planted stories intended to serve a national purpose abroad came home and were circulated here and believed here because this would mean that the CIA could manipulate the news in the United States by channeling it through some foreign country,’ Democratic Idaho Senator Frank Church said at a press conference surrounding the hearing. Church chaired the Church Committee, a precursor to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was responsible for investigating illegal intelligence gathering by the NSA, CIA and FBI.
This exact tactic — planting disinformation in foreign media outlets so the disinfo would knowingly surface in the United States as a way of circumventing the rules on domestic operations — was specifically argued for as being legal simply because it did not originate on U.S. soil by none other than CIA Director William Casey in 1981.
Former President Harry S. Truman, who oversaw the creation of the CIA in 1947 when he signed the National Security Act, later wrote that he never intended the CIA for more than intelligence gathering. ‘I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations,’ Truman penned in 1963 a year after the disastrous CIA Bay of Pigs operation.
Again, please keep this in mind when you watch the mainstream ‘news’ in this country.
De Amerikaanse onderzoeksjournalist Carl Bernstein, die samen met Bob Woodward het Watergate Schandaal onthulde, dat in 1974 uiteindelijk leidde tot het aftreden van president Richard Nixon, spendeerde na zijn vertrek bij The Washington Post in 1977 zes maanden ‘looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press during the Cold War years. His 25,000-word cover story, published in Rolling Stone on October 20, 1977,’ getiteld ‘THE CIA AND THE MEDIA’ begon als volgt:
How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up.
In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.
Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.
Welke journalisten op dit moment bewust of onbewust met één of meerdere westerse inlichtingendiensten samenwerken, of de Mossad, is uiteraard niet bekend, maar gezien het feit dat er nauwe banden bestaan tussen journalisten en de staat, en zij voor hun voortbestaan van elkaar afhankelijk zijn, kan men ervan uitgaan dat voor het systeem ‘betrouwbare’ mainstream-journalisten collaboreren met westerse inlichtingendiensten, in de overtuiging dat zij daarmee het vaderland van dienst zijn. Hoe afhankelijk de macht is van de reguliere journalistiek blijkt nog eens uit de volgende belangwekkende anecdote die professor Edward S. Herman geeft in zijn studie Beyond Hypocrisy. Decoding The News In An Age Of Propaganda (1992). In het hoofdstuk ‘The Unfree Flow of Information’ wijst hij op het volgende significante voorbeeld:
In 1984 the United States withdrew from United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), on the ground (among others) of its alleged threat to the ‘free flow of information.’ In the standard formulation in the U.S. press, UNESCO was said to be in favor of a New World Information Order (NWIO) whose essence was ‘government control of the media’ and the ‘licensing of journalists’ — whereas the United States and its media were dedicated to unconditional freedom of communications as a matter of high principle. This formulation, a caricature of the real positions of the contending parties, reflected an undislosed conflict of interest on the part of the western media, as well as remarkable hypocrisy.
For many years western media and news agencies have dominated the international flow of news. Third World spokespersons have long protested the biased portrayals of their countries in western news and called for a two-way and balanced news flow. A more basic Third World concern is the threat to cultural integrity and sovereignty from the flood of western advertising messages and other cultural products, as well as news. A number of third World (and sympathetic western) analysts contended that true independence and popular mobilization for development are impossible without independent national communications systems. Such concerns were accentuated in the 1960s with the development of satellite communications and remote sensing technologies. The former allows western programmers to transmit news, ads, and entertainment, entirely outside the control of national governments. Remote sensing (via satellieten. svh) allows western states to survey the mineral and other resources of lesser powers, again resulting in a loss in control, power, and independence.
The official U.S. position, followed consistently in the U.S. mass media, was that the only issues raised by a New World Information Order were ‘freedom of the press’ versus government control.’ Freedom of the press meant a commercial press funded by advertising. Might an advertising-based press display a systematic bias based on its restricted revenue source? Might it be affected by proprietary wealth and interest? Might it reflect the national and corporate interests of the home country and its leading multinational organizations? How concentrated could the media become before it should be regarded as ‘unfree’? These questions were never raised in the U.S. mass media in their frequent reports and discussions of the withdrawal.
A media worried about the effects of the New World Information Order on the free flow of information should also be deeply concerned about constraints on free flow on their own western turf. It is one of the ironies of the U.S. and British withdrawals from UNESCO, however, that they were engineered by governments notable for increased secrecy, the curtailment of access to information, covert operations, deception, and manipulation of the press. Demac (professor Donna A. Demac. prominente Amerikaanse media-expert. svh) points out that ‘From its beginnings, the Reagan administration made little attempt to disguise its preference for operating outside congressional and public scrutiny; it quickly adopted an array of secrecy regulations that reached far beyond those of previous administrations.’ In addition to major restrictions on the free speech rights of government workers and a sharp increase in the surveillance and harassment of those opposed to government policies, the new administration greatly expanded the classification and destruction of documents it deemed sensitive. It even began the reclassification of documents already in the public domain, a policy worthy of a Ministry of Truth and consistent with its systematic lying and rewriting of history.
Ter herinnering: Het belang van een ideologische versie van de werkelijkheid werd al in de achttiende eeuw door David Hume beseft toen deze Schotse Verlichtingsfilosoof zich verwonderde over 'the easiness with which the many are governed by the few' en 'the implicit submission with which the men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.' Hume concludeerde tenslotte:
When we enquire by what means this wonder is brought about we shall find, that as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.
Vandaar het belang van de macht om te kunnen vertrouwen op de solidariteit van propagandisten als Geert Mak, Hubert Smeets, Bas Heijne, Ian Buruma, etcetera. Alleen via de massamedia is de elite in staat om de massa te beheersen. Zonder dergelijke vazallen zou de bevolking een eigen mening kunnen vormen, die niet de belangen van de ‘few’ voorop stelt. Meer de volgende keer.
Geert Mak's grijsharig publiek in Schagen Noord Holland met Grote Verwachtingen geduldig wachtend op het Orakel van Jorwert. De taaie Nederlandse middenklasse is de ruggengraat van Nederland.
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