More manufactured propaganda?
Moon of Alabama
Syria: An "Airstrike" That Did Not Happen
Also
Considering the nature of social media, and the manner in which information (or disinformation) is spread online, it should come as no surprise that a number of the viral videos, popular twitter feeds, and other materials that seemingly align with the anti-Assad line of London and Washington are, in fact, the direct products of a government-sponsored propaganda campaign.Covert operations on the citizenry in addition to surveillance. How is that democracy?
It’s not hard to see what the British Government is trying to do with such efforts; they are an attempt to control the messaging of the war on Syria, and to redirect grassroots anti-war activism to channels deemed acceptable to the political establishment. Imagine for a moment the impact on an 18-year-old college freshman just stepping into the political arena, and immediately encountering seasoned veteran activists who influence his/her thinking on the nature of the war, who the good guys and bad guys are, and what should be done. Now multiply that by thousands and thousands of students. The impact of such efforts is profound.…This is what happened to me in the Sixties regarding Vietnam. I didn't figure it out until I was on active duty in the US Naval Reserve in operations.
NEO
Syria, ISIS, and the US-UK Propaganda War
Eric Draitser
Army of Fake Social Media Friends to Promote Propaganda
Darlene Storm, Computerworld
The next step is setting people up to commit crimes for which they can be prosecuted?
It's recently been revealed that the U.S. government contracted HBGary Federal for the development of software which could create multiple fake social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on controversial issues by promoting propaganda. It could also be used as surveillance to find public opinions with points of view the powers-that-be didn't like. It could then potentially have their "fake" people run smear campaigns against those "real" people. As disturbing as this is, it's not really new for U.S. intelligence or private intelligence firms to do the dirty work behind closed doors.…PCWorld (Fed 23, 2011)
Army of Fake Social Media Friends to Promote Propaganda
Darlene Storm, Computerworld
The next step is setting people up to commit crimes for which they can be prosecuted?
2 comments:
@Tom said "I didn't figure it out until I was on active duty in the US Naval Reserve in operations."
Tell us more?
I was a kid growing up in a small Southern hick town where we were indoctrinated in the domino theory and it was un-patriotic to question the war. That said, I don't remember ANYONE in that pro-war town who volunteered for combat in 'Nam. Some were drafted, some claimed health problems to avoid the military (one chickenhawk friend claimed to have an ulcer which has somehow never bothered him since), and many volunteered so they could choose a less dangerous assignment. My conservative uncle, facing an army draft that would have surely meant being a grunt in 'Nam, got our of it by volunteering for the Air Force and serving in Korea instead. Funny how everyone is for war as long as they don't have to fight it?
Cassius Clay's refusal to join the military got people in my town seriously debating the war for the first time. Most people don't follow foreign policy closely but they do follow sports.
At that time we had no way of understanding what was really happening in Vietnam other than what Walter Cronkite told us, but even a kid like me could observe that there were no VietCong landing on our beaches.
Re: believing news reports on the Middle East. There are a very few sources that I trust, like MofA, Sy Hersh, and the Saker. Otherwise I assume that all news from the Middle East is slanted and the best you can hope for is to understand the slant.
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