The Hate Us for Our Freedoms (of the Press)
US lags in propaganda war: Rumsfeld
"The United States lags dangerously behind al Qaeda and other enemies in getting out information in the digital media age and must update its old-fashioned methods, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday."
(FYI: Rumsfeld supposedly doesn't use e-mail. At least that's what we're told when his email correspondence is requested by a congressional investigation commitee....)
"Modernization is crucial to winning the hearts and minds of Muslims worldwide who are bombarded with negative images of the West, Rumsfeld told the Council on Foreign Relations."
Do they really think they haven't won the hearts and minds of Muslims because of bad spin?
No. Of course not. No they do not. But we have just stumbled on the "spin" portion of this piece as the message has morphed from "al Qaeda uses the internet" to "Muslims are getting negative images of the West from the internet".
"The Pentagon chief said today's weapons of war included e-mail, Blackberries, instant messaging, digital cameras and Web logs, or blogs."Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but ... our country has not adapted," Rumsfeld said."
By "our country" he's of course only referring to the Intelligence agencies. The actual "country" of course has a computer in every home and is increasingly getting it's news from the internet rather than mainstream media. Oh...and a lot of "our country" have weblogs also....
"U.S. military public affairs officers must learn to anticipate news and respond faster, and good public affairs officers should be rewarded with promotions, he said.The Pentagon's propaganda machine still operates mostly eight hours a day, five days a week while the challenges it faces occur 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Rumsfeld called that a "dangerous deficiency."
Read: "dangerous deficiency" of control over what people can and can't read about. What's truly dangerous here is that they're now talking openly about their policy to step up the level of propaganda on the internet and on weblogs.
"He lamented that vast media attention about U.S. abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq outweighed that given to the discovery of "Saddam Hussein's mass graves."...Rumsfeld also cited the methodical U.S. response to a Newsweek magazine report that interrogators at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had placed the Koran, Islam's holy book, on toilets and flushed one down.After riots around the world killed 16 people, Newsweek retracted the story.
"It was posted on Web sites, sent in e-mails, repeated on satellite television, radio stations for days, before the facts could be discovered," Rumsfeld said."
It should perhaps be pointed out here that humiliation and torture did undeniably happen at Abu Ghraib. But by gum, nobody flushed a book in the toilet! Or more correctly, Newsweek backed-off those allegations under extreme pressure from the NeoCon administration when they couldn't get their "senior government source" to come forward publicly and corroborate. So Rumsfeld is stretching things just a tad (c.f. propaganda, disinformation) by saying that 'facts' were 'discovered'.
Sigh....
Again and again lately we find the NeoCon mask is coming off. Or maybe I should say that they don't even bother to tie it on any more...just sort of holding it loosely in front of the face.
First of all let's note that this news report is just a White House press release through Reuters to say "we intend to spend more money to fight "al Qaeda" because they're undermining our own PR efforts, particularly through the internet." But let me ask you something....do you really think it's al Qaeda that's responsible for undermining the integrity of this administration's war in the Middle East?
Of course it isn't "al Qaeda" he's actually referring to at all....it's me. And thousands of other people like me who are using the free press of the internet to share and disseminate information that the corporate media can't or doesn't sufficiently or objectively report. What I'm convinced Rumsfeld is saying is that they intend to follow Wal-Mart's lead and set up a PR "war room" so they can leap all over unexpected bad press the moment it surfaces and start doing their famous spin-control and disinformation dance on these here lawless internets. And little doubt they'll start floating their own propaganda about through sites "not directly connected with" non-governmental organizations "unaffiliated with" any political party. In other words, we can expect them to roll out the internet version of the highly disinfo pro-war TV commercials that play all day long here in Minnesota.
And, God knows they have all the funny money in the world to finance it.
The only consolation is that their wet dreams can't last forever.
The fantasy is winding down.
Posted by: qrswave | February 17, 2006 at 08:38 PM
Insightful post, thanks.
Posted by: Devin | February 17, 2006 at 11:44 PM
Thanx, STeven. This is the kind of story I would have glossed over and thought 'oh, well, more tricks from those silly neocons'. I guess I'm just becoming so numb to it all anymore. But i'm so glad you pointed out that they we're declaring war on the bloggers and on the internet. Now at least I know the glove has been formally cast down!
Also qrswave--do you really think the collapse is going to come soon enough--I'm starting to think we are already too late.
Posted by: /backslash\ | February 18, 2006 at 11:32 AM
Oh yeah...excellent blog. One of the best out there!!! Keep fighting the good fight my friend!
Posted by: /backslash\ | February 18, 2006 at 11:34 AM
Fast and furious the NeoCon machine moves. So we must as well. It's self-organization time out here in the rhizome; time to plan for major changes up ahead in conjunction with my neighbors.
Lifeboats...they aren't just for cruise ships any more.
Posted by: Chris | February 18, 2006 at 01:52 PM