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WB: Cutting and Running to Victory
Billmon
While an abrupt, overnight switch in the propaganda machine’s output from stay-the-course-forever to cut-and-run-to victory might grate on the ears of those of us who still haven’t quite adjusted to the Fox News era, I doubt the vast majority of the American people will care — or even notice. They’ll just be happy that the war is "over" and the boys and girls will be coming home, allowing them to forget the whole disagreeable business. Anyone who believes otherwise must have slept through the last few elections.
Sooner or later, of course, the clueless idiots will find out that the war — the real war, the war for the Middle East — isn’t over, and isn’t likely to be over in their lifetimes, or even their children’s lifetimes. But it’s probably safe to assume that the first Tuesday in November will have come and gone by then.
Cutting and Running to Victory
Yes, annie Modern propaganda comes in many forms, but of primary concern in these two cases are:
‘Mobile truth’s,’ or the reinterpretation of events (revisionist history),a
common feature on the Internet, which is increasingly becoming an entry point into the more conventional media; Psyops in support of operations, including spin control, after action reports,or informative accounts when the media is controlled by intelligence and law enforcement; The digital nature of media–text, photographs, video, audio–has undermined the ability to establish the reality of what they represent as observational proxies. This has recently been termed the ‘fictive environment’ by the military and I’ll use the term for lack a better one.
Mobile truth: in the absence of public facts or knowledge, speculation has run wild. As usual, everyone’s favorite pet suspect emerges–terrorists.
PsyOps: this game is lose-lose for everyone; the public is confused and angered, the investigation is hampered or discredited, the sources of the false information will eventually be shown to be wrong (although they will launch secondary operations to manage this as well, alleging further cover-up, conspiracy, and so forth). What happens though is a continual lessening of the resistance in the information environment to future psyops operations, and this is the long term benefit sought by the perpetrators. Confidence in the government is at an all time low–post Viet Nam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Whitewater, Zippergate etc. The readiness to believe the worst becomes greater and greater, and public mental health suffers.
Never forget that on November 8, 1996 Electronic Civil Defense Became a National Issue. And amtter of time before a “Electronic Pearl Harbor.” FBI Director Louis Freeh, made the statement that, that additional electronic eavesdropping capabilities were needed to thwart the threats of domestic terrorism. He also referred to various law enforcement concerns that unless US citizens voluntarily complied with a Key Escrow scheme of some variety, would not interfere with government investigations into crime and terrorism.
On July 15 of that year , President Clinton issued an Executive Order calling for the Establishment of President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection. Certain national infrastructures are so vital that their incapacity or destruction would have a debilitating impact on the defense or economic security of the United States. These critical infrastructures include:
telecommunications, electrical power systems,
gas and oil storage and transportation,
banking and finance, transportation,
water supply systems, emergency services (including medical, police, fire, and rescue), and continuity of government.
And here’s the thing, in order to protect them you have to control them.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 25 2006 17:12 utc | 9
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