In the aftermath of the two great propaganda operations of our era — Iraq WMD claims and the dismissal of pandemic lab origins — the media focus on the lies of bit players to avoid a reckoning.
One thing did strike me oddly, though. When you spoke of "the two great propaganda operations of our era " - the campaign to demonize Russia, in preparation for the U.S. proxy war against it, stands out as a glaring omission .
As a more than 5-decades long dissident, anti-war / peace activist (and also small-d democrat, critic of the corporatocracy's imperialism), I've been watching U.S. propaganda campaigns for a very long time. I thought the run-up to the Iraq invasion was as bad as it could get, as all the mainstream media parroted claims, of non-existent threats, that even I had already known had been proven false.
Yet I've never seen anything as sweeping, in its breadth, scale, intensity or obvious success as the campaign by U.S. neocons (in both sides of the duopoly) to demonize Russia, thus ensuring broad public acceptance for the U.S. - provoked proxy war against it in Ukraine. There are of course two aspects of most such propaganda. One is the active planting of false claims and simplistic fables (e.g., "The evil Putin gave us Donald Trump and is on a quest to build an empire by swallowing up one nation after another"); and the other is in the censorship - the suppression of any factual reporting that doesn't line up with that narrative. Both aspects are in full force. The reason that most people now, apparently, even the ones considering themselves the most 'liberal' or 'progressive' in values, now gladly cheerlead for war, is that they have had a steady dose of anti-Russia propaganda without any antidote that might come in the writings and broadcast of people like former U.S. officials Ray McGovern, Ambassador Jack Matlock, ex-military guys like Col. Doug. Macgregor, Scott Ritter, former NATO adviser Jacques Baud, scholars like Mearscheimer, Cohen, et al, and the relatively small number of independent journalists and writers who haven't sold their souls to the corporatocracy - such as Aaron Mate, Abby Martin, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Caitlin Johnstone, Matt Taibbi, et al.... all of whom are forced eventually to small, often 'invisible' platforms which themselves often seem to be 'disappeared'. This kind of information suppression is managed by forcing such journalists from the 'respectable' outlets where they may have once published, to these more-easily marginalized platforms, and by demonetizing them, deranking them within search engines, flagging their new platforms as 'questionable' on social media posts or outright banishment.
Such narrative control has reached a stage I certainly haven't ever witnessed despite my having been alert to its previous manifestations. It has succeeded beyond any level I could have imagined in the most dystopian of visions. It is not only my own observation, but also that of the (few) among my circles of friends and acquaintances. To even try to point any one else to the long historical context, the documented events and recorded words of the players themselves- will be met with accusations of being a 'Putin propagandist'. The absurdity and irony of such reactions never seems to be given a second thought. It is truly an Orwellian time.
Good post. And the fact that media does not correct or alter its initial stories when subsequent new evidence and data arrives is proof that Mr. Husseini has made an intelligent observation.
The CIA was working in concert with Bush/Cheney and was also diametrically opposed to Trump. I find this fascinating. Every neo-con from Frum to Kristol left the party. I don’t care about either party in particular but it was definitely a seismic shift in how the people who actually run the country wanted geopolitical events handled.
The neocons may have been initially most successful within the Reagan and GW Bush administrations, but they were above Party. The evidence is clear. The defining Project for a New American Century (PNAC) had a straight line to U.S. foreign policy control. It was a Who's Who of the connected neocons: Bolton, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, and others served in Bush's Admin., for instance. Co-founder Robert Kagan's wife Victoria Nuland appears in several adminsitrations, including in Obama's, where she was apparent point person in the 2014 coup against Ukraine Pres. Yanukovych. Today she serves in a similar role under Biden. Jake Sullivan was another Obama guy. And this is just a tiny sampling of the threads.
The role these people have is clearly 'non-partisan' for good reason. The same essential American Exceptionalism - itself just a philosophical underpinning for imperialism- pervades both parties. It was Bill Clinton who really started pushing NATO up against Russia's borders (in breach of the Bush Sr. promise to Russia); it was Hillary who goaded Obama into Mid East wars and wanted to bait Russia into a shooting war with a no-fly zone in Syria. It was Obama (through Biden) who okayed the coup in Ukraine that set the stage for the script documented in the 2019 Rand Corp. memorandum- to draw Russia into another wounding and bleeding / draining - this time in Ukraine. And it is sick people like Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi who appear to be the biggest cheerleaders for unlimited war in Ukraine in their dream of beating down Russia.
Agree that the focus of our political/presstitute class is on trivial crimes in lieu of issues of substance and the bigger frauds. That said I believe JJ Couey is correct that biology negates the theory that a viral clone can sustain its fidelity to infect more than a localized group by release of clones or cause a pandemic. The bigger fraud is the idea that they have the power to unleash bioweapons when in fact the real weapon is psyops that have us believe in unseen threat for a broader war on freedom.
The WMD revelation is a limited hang-out. The bigger lie than the WMDs was the idea that the towers (all three of them) fell on 9/11 due to gravitational collapse and were not assisted by incendiary explosives. We're are actually allowed to gripe about the WMD debacle that, oops, justified an invasion, but we still cannot talk about 9/11, which was the basis for fear and hatred against all Muslims, without which the WMDs would never have gotten the play it did.
Another good post. Thanks for writing it.
One thing did strike me oddly, though. When you spoke of "the two great propaganda operations of our era " - the campaign to demonize Russia, in preparation for the U.S. proxy war against it, stands out as a glaring omission .
As a more than 5-decades long dissident, anti-war / peace activist (and also small-d democrat, critic of the corporatocracy's imperialism), I've been watching U.S. propaganda campaigns for a very long time. I thought the run-up to the Iraq invasion was as bad as it could get, as all the mainstream media parroted claims, of non-existent threats, that even I had already known had been proven false.
Yet I've never seen anything as sweeping, in its breadth, scale, intensity or obvious success as the campaign by U.S. neocons (in both sides of the duopoly) to demonize Russia, thus ensuring broad public acceptance for the U.S. - provoked proxy war against it in Ukraine. There are of course two aspects of most such propaganda. One is the active planting of false claims and simplistic fables (e.g., "The evil Putin gave us Donald Trump and is on a quest to build an empire by swallowing up one nation after another"); and the other is in the censorship - the suppression of any factual reporting that doesn't line up with that narrative. Both aspects are in full force. The reason that most people now, apparently, even the ones considering themselves the most 'liberal' or 'progressive' in values, now gladly cheerlead for war, is that they have had a steady dose of anti-Russia propaganda without any antidote that might come in the writings and broadcast of people like former U.S. officials Ray McGovern, Ambassador Jack Matlock, ex-military guys like Col. Doug. Macgregor, Scott Ritter, former NATO adviser Jacques Baud, scholars like Mearscheimer, Cohen, et al, and the relatively small number of independent journalists and writers who haven't sold their souls to the corporatocracy - such as Aaron Mate, Abby Martin, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Caitlin Johnstone, Matt Taibbi, et al.... all of whom are forced eventually to small, often 'invisible' platforms which themselves often seem to be 'disappeared'. This kind of information suppression is managed by forcing such journalists from the 'respectable' outlets where they may have once published, to these more-easily marginalized platforms, and by demonetizing them, deranking them within search engines, flagging their new platforms as 'questionable' on social media posts or outright banishment.
Such narrative control has reached a stage I certainly haven't ever witnessed despite my having been alert to its previous manifestations. It has succeeded beyond any level I could have imagined in the most dystopian of visions. It is not only my own observation, but also that of the (few) among my circles of friends and acquaintances. To even try to point any one else to the long historical context, the documented events and recorded words of the players themselves- will be met with accusations of being a 'Putin propagandist'. The absurdity and irony of such reactions never seems to be given a second thought. It is truly an Orwellian time.
Useful context for the bizarre fixation of corporate media on Santos.
Good post. And the fact that media does not correct or alter its initial stories when subsequent new evidence and data arrives is proof that Mr. Husseini has made an intelligent observation.
The CIA was working in concert with Bush/Cheney and was also diametrically opposed to Trump. I find this fascinating. Every neo-con from Frum to Kristol left the party. I don’t care about either party in particular but it was definitely a seismic shift in how the people who actually run the country wanted geopolitical events handled.
The neocons may have been initially most successful within the Reagan and GW Bush administrations, but they were above Party. The evidence is clear. The defining Project for a New American Century (PNAC) had a straight line to U.S. foreign policy control. It was a Who's Who of the connected neocons: Bolton, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, and others served in Bush's Admin., for instance. Co-founder Robert Kagan's wife Victoria Nuland appears in several adminsitrations, including in Obama's, where she was apparent point person in the 2014 coup against Ukraine Pres. Yanukovych. Today she serves in a similar role under Biden. Jake Sullivan was another Obama guy. And this is just a tiny sampling of the threads.
The role these people have is clearly 'non-partisan' for good reason. The same essential American Exceptionalism - itself just a philosophical underpinning for imperialism- pervades both parties. It was Bill Clinton who really started pushing NATO up against Russia's borders (in breach of the Bush Sr. promise to Russia); it was Hillary who goaded Obama into Mid East wars and wanted to bait Russia into a shooting war with a no-fly zone in Syria. It was Obama (through Biden) who okayed the coup in Ukraine that set the stage for the script documented in the 2019 Rand Corp. memorandum- to draw Russia into another wounding and bleeding / draining - this time in Ukraine. And it is sick people like Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi who appear to be the biggest cheerleaders for unlimited war in Ukraine in their dream of beating down Russia.
Agree that the focus of our political/presstitute class is on trivial crimes in lieu of issues of substance and the bigger frauds. That said I believe JJ Couey is correct that biology negates the theory that a viral clone can sustain its fidelity to infect more than a localized group by release of clones or cause a pandemic. The bigger fraud is the idea that they have the power to unleash bioweapons when in fact the real weapon is psyops that have us believe in unseen threat for a broader war on freedom.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1685939269
The WMD revelation is a limited hang-out. The bigger lie than the WMDs was the idea that the towers (all three of them) fell on 9/11 due to gravitational collapse and were not assisted by incendiary explosives. We're are actually allowed to gripe about the WMD debacle that, oops, justified an invasion, but we still cannot talk about 9/11, which was the basis for fear and hatred against all Muslims, without which the WMDs would never have gotten the play it did.