shortlink: bit.do/iwvdmm – posted on blog (with preliminary comments): https://azprojects.wordpress.com/2018/05/14/disinformation-manufacturing-monsters/
Following destruction of European economies by WW1, Americans stepped into the role of world leadership. Woodrow Wilson made many statements like “every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live…. ” and that “no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.” Ho Chi Minh was disappointed when Americans refused to help the Vietnamese in their struggle for freedom against the French. Like many other leaders of independence movements, he learned of the disconnect between words and policies that is a characteristic of disinformation. In the curious reasoning of an official U.S. commission to the Philippines, “American sovereignty is only another name for the liberty of the Filipinos.”
Because of strong popular support for democracy and freedom within American public, the postwar USA strategy for global domination took a distinctly different shape from the pre-war imperialism. Taking a leaf from Machiavelli who recommended creating and slaying enemies, they invented the enemy of “Communism” and painted it in the worst possible colors. USA wars to dominate the globe and control world economies were painted in terms of a battle of Good and Evil – much like Star Wars. This myth, that the Americans were pure, good, and had all excellent human qualities, while their enemies were purely evil and had no redeeming virtues, was deeply planted into the American psyche. Hollywood and many other media initiatives spread this message, and it was widely believed by the rest of the world. There is plenty of documentation proving that CIA grossly exaggerated the potential of the communist threat and strength of the Russian economy and war capability, so as to scare the American public and to generate more funding for “Defense” (note the clever mislabeling: USA has never fought a defensive war). Fabricated rumors of Russian plots to destroy USA democracy created national hysteria destroying lives and careers of thousands of Americans during the “Red Scare”.
Imperialism USA style sought to protect business interests and maintain an economic stranglehold on the world. Under the pretext of fighting communism, USA destroyed economies and ruined lives of millions of poor people all over the world. When the USA sought to replace the French rule over Vietnam (as they had replaced Spanish rule over Latin America), they labeled the Vietnamese independence movement as communist. Forced to fight against the USA whom they had hoped would be their ally, the Vietnamese turned to the other superpowers, Russia and China for support, turning this into a self fulfilling labeling.
British monopoly on Iranian oil permitted them to pay only 16% of its value to Iran. When immensely popular Mossadegh took over via democratic process in 1951, he nationalized the oil and paid the British a fair price. The tactics used by CIA to create a coup and regain control of Iranian oil are of special interest. They bribed journalists, preachers and other opinion leaders to create hostility to Mossadegh, hired thugs to attack people, making it look as if the attacks were by Mossadegh. Street gangs were paid to set off riots. A plague of violence descended on Tehran. Gangs of thugs ran wildly through the streets, breaking shop windows, firing guns into mosques, beating passerby, and shouting ‘Long live Mossadegh and Communism!” CIA subverted the army to stage a coup and replaced him by a US puppet. US oil companies — Gulf, Standard of New Jersey, Texaco and Mobil — received a 40 percent share of the new National Iranian Oil Company. The Shah established a tyrannical dictatorship with the help of the CIA-trained Savak. Some of their infamous torture techniques are described in the CIA Kubark Manual. McCoy, who has written a history of torture, writes that CIA techniques based on scientific research are the first genuine advance in the science of inflicting pain since the middle ages.
Chile had enjoyed 160 years of peaceful democratic rule, when Salvador Allende came to power. US Copper mining interests had earned 7 billion dollars profits on an investment of 1 billion in Chile, and were threatened by Allende’s plans to nationalize copper mines. CIA trainers whipped the Chilean military into an anti-Communist frenzy, persuading them that socialists were de facto Russian spies, a force alien to Chilean society—a homegrown “enemy within.” In fact, it was the military that had become the true domestic enemy, ready to turn its weapons on the population it was sworn to protect. General Pinochet carried out a coup on both the economic and political front. Mass killings and torture of citizens were justified on the grounds that the Government was fighting a war against dangerous Marxist terrorists, funded and controlled by the KGB. In every case, the threat was either wildly exaggerated or completely manufactured, as revealed by later declassified U.S. government’s own intelligence reports. At the same time, the best social security system in Latin America for the poor was dismantled leading to widespread poverty (cheap labor) where none had existed. Policies wildly favorable to foreign multinationals and harmful to domestic interests were put in place with a systematic campaign of “disinformation” on the economic front.
The collapse of Russia led to national consensus in the USA on enjoying the “peace dividend” ; evil had been vanquished, and there were no enemies left to fight. NATO was no longer necessary, and should be dismantled. Congress proposed to divert the massive cold war budget to social welfare, building or repairing essential infrastructure (lack of which led to the Katrina disaster). Within the corridors of the Pentagon and the “Defense” industry threatened by billions of dollars of budget cuts, there was desperate brainstorming about need to manufacture a new monster. Their dilemma was that there were no worthy enemies to be found. With USA war capabilities much greater than that of the rest of the world combined, there was no one who could step into the position vacated by Russia. Perhaps we can take perverse pride in that the lot fell on us, the poor Muslims. Proceeding were started by Samuel Huntington, who put forth the thesis that henceforth wars would be fought between civilizations, and that the Muslims were the biggest threat to the Western civilization. The entire civilization of the Muslims as a whole was a sufficiently big target that there was no chance of achieving success in destroying it quickly, leading to the need for a new enemy. Close on the heels of Russian collapse, the CIA lured Saddam Hussain into invading Kuwait, providing a pretext for the Gulf War, and buying time to put the new strategy in place. Before the first budget cut proposals could see the light of day, enough new enemies were in place that US “Defense” budgets kept increasing. Meanwhile, the monster manufacturing industry was in full gear, and today the USA public feels the same hysteria against Islam and Muslims that was once attached to communists.
Today, exactly the same tactics that worked so successfully in Iran and Chile and numerous other parts of the world – for details see The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein – is being repeated without essential changes in Pakistan. Army intelligence sources conclude that there are less than 4000 “American Taliban” in the NWFP. These have been heavily supplied with arms and money by the CIA, and can recruit local populace in the name of Islam at heavy salaries. Just as thugs in Iran were paid to vandalize and shout slogans favoring communism and Mossadegh, so thugs have been hired to shout Islamic slogans and carry out extremely cruel acts. Movies have been made of grisly slaughter by people shouting the Kalima, and widely circulated. Trillions of dollars of USA defense budget depends on making the Islamic monster as fearsome as possible. The skill of the CIA at manufacturing videos for disinformation, like the faked Osama Bin Laden video, is well established. It was recently reported that Pentagon paid millions of dollars to a UK PR firm to manufacture fake Al-Qaeda videos. There are numerous well documented “False Flag” operations which show the pattern of how CIA operates to create dis-information useful to US interests.
Living in the post-fact world, it has become very hard to discriminate between facts and fiction. The best approach may be to “follow the money” — look at the interests that are supported by the news. Of course, propaganda makers are well-aware of this and attempt to conceal motivations — Bernays, the creator of modern propaganda, advocated using “News Items” instead of Adverts, to create greater effect. .