Americans Victims of Pentagon Media PSYOPS

I’m Aghast But Not Surprised

In a bombshell article published yesterday in the NY Times, entitled “Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” investigative journalist David Barstow reveals a continuing Pentagon psychological operations (PSYOP) maneuver to disinform the American public through the manipulation of retired senior military officers employed by the media as news analysts. Barstow says, “Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance…”

The 14-page article was based on smoking-gun official Pentagon documentation–8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation–obtained by the NY Times after suing the Defense Department to gain access.

Why the U.S. Can’t Leave Iraq

Just ran across this fascinating article by Christopher King on the Al Jazeera website. I was impressed not so much by the premise, which is familiar, as by the numbers, which are bruising. If you have ever asked yourself: “When will this American madness end?” you’ll be smitten by this article.

But before you go have a look at this montage by Mark Fiore, a real trip down memory lane. The title is “We Stopped the Vietnam War, So We Can Stop the Iraq War.”

Are Our Blogs Being Monitored and Manipulated?

On April 4 I published on this blog a brief article reviewing a couple of events of the Hay Festival Alhambra program in Granada. In it I mentioned the participation of Muslim intellectual and spokesman, Tariq Ramadan, who gave what seemed to me a cogent and reasonable talk on the subject of European Muslims.

The very next day I received from a commentator who called himself “etabori” four dense pages of elaborately documented comments on my article. The gist of all of them was that Tariq Ramadan was a not a disinterested intellectual, but a mendacious, double-dealing Jihadi who associated with known terrorist apologists and had actually donated money to a Palestinian charity. Though I didn’t agree with his blanket denunciation of Ramadan, I wrote back to etabori asking him to identify himself so that I could authorize the publication of his comments. No answer.

But the next day, April 6, I receive another barrage of comments from etabori, along with more comments along the same lines from someone who called himself “Jacques.” This Jaques continued sending similar material on the 7th and 8th, so I sent him an email asking him to identify himself. No answer. Then on the 12th I begin to receive a series of comments cut from the same cloth from commentators whose email addresses turned out to be false.

U.S. Shows Extreme Generosity with Refugees… from Justice

Plum Jobs Go to Coalition Collaborators

It has been heart warming to see the generosity with which the United States government, universities and businesses are treating Tony Blair, ex-prime minister of the U.K., and José María Aznar, ex-president of Spain. Both of these distinguished elder statesmen were named to prestigious professorships at American universities, and both of them are currently enjoying succulent advisory positions with American businesses.

Keeping in mind what Tony Blair and José María Aznar have most conspicuously in common–their slavish support for the United States invasion of Iraq–and especially after seeing this satirical video (below) recently posted on YouTube by Spanish critics of their ex president, I am prompted to ask, “What’s going on here?”

Banned Arab Intellectuals Speak Out in Granada

Hay Festival Alhambra Provides the Forum

Granada is hosting an edition of the Hay Festival this week. This event started out as a modest book festival in the Welsh town of Hay on Wye in 1988, but has since developed into a major itinerant international cultural event. This year’s Granada version includes talks by some distinguished spokesmen for the Arab/Muslim cause, so Maureen and I went down to hear what they had to say.

The first speaker was the Palestinian poet, Mourid Barghouti, a native of Ramallah. Today Barghouti is a tall, impeccably-dressed, white-haired elder poet/statesman, an eloquent spokesman for the Palestinian cause. He was a young man finishing an English literature degree in Cairo when the 1967 Six Day War broke out. Unable to return to his homeland Barghouti spent the next 30 years in a cruel exile which began in Egypt. But on the occasion of Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Israel in 1977, Barghouti was deported and separated from his wife (the novelist and university professor, Radwa Ashour) and only child for the better part of 17 years. During this time he lived mainly in Budapest, where he was Palestinian cultural attaché and PLO representative in the World Federation of Democratic Youth.

Randy Newman’s Best Defense of America

I invite you to listen to this great Randy Newman song again: Just a few Words in Defense of Our Country.

Newman’s satire is so easy going, so fast and loose, so intelligent and so insidious that when you think he’s talking about other people–stupid, vain, greedy, hypocritical other people–little by little you begin to perceive yourself in the picture he has painted.

American Legion Convention 1964

This photograph by Gary Winogrand, taken 44 years ago, seems to me not to have lost any of its powerful meaning. If anything, it’s more relevant today than when it was made. It is, I think, a reminder of lessons that were never learned.

Scan courtesy of Masters of Photography

I’d Like You to Meet Lewis Lapham

I’ve been an unconditional admirer of Lewis Lapham ever since I discovered Harper’s Magazine many years ago. Lapham was the editor of Harper’s for 30 years, from 1976 to 2006. His current title is “editor emeritus,” which is not to say he’s retired. He still writes his regular Notebook feature for Harper’s and he’s embarked on a new history-journal project called Lapham’s Quarterly. The journal’s interest goes beyond its excellent content, for the three media it employs simultaneously: online, print and radio. Not to drag this introduction out, I just want to offer you some of Lapham’s comments on YouTube. There are a couple of hour-long interviews, along with some shorter features. All of them are worth spending your time. Lewis Lapham is a singular American. If there were 100 like him it would be a different country.

Who Sees What from Where and Why

One of the main assertions of my book, The Turncoat Chronicles, is that there are aspects of American society which can be seen better from abroad than from “under the American bell jar.” What we outsiders can see clearly–while wondering why the Americans themselves have so much trouble discerning the same phenomena– is how the United States interacts both with other countries around the world, as well as with their domestic minorities. From abroad we see cynicism, manipulation, lies, pre-emptive warfare, economic abuses, and torture. Inside of the United States we see a troubled and truculent populace armed to the teeth, the world’s largest prison population, and the loathsome death penalty. I’m sorry. That’s what we see in the media, both domestic and foreign, online and offline, along with the unending attempts by the U.S. establishment to cover it all up or simply deny it.

Iraq: Who Won the War?

This article in today’s Independent provides a nice summing up of what the U.S. and Britain have achieved with their war on Iraq.  Authors Raymond Whitaker and Stephen Foley have prepared a thorough and dispassionate report from an independent British point of view. It makes fascinating–and depressing–reading.  At the end of the piece they offer us two lists, one of winners, the other of losers:

• Winners: Dick Cheney, Iran, Sir John Scarlett, Al-Qa’ida, the Kurds, Tim Spicer
• Losers: George Bush, the neocons, Tony Blair, the Palestinians, the US media, Afghanistan, British security

If you find that article fascinating, you might also have a look at Lord Owen analyses Tony Blair’s psyche from today’s Times of London, written by Tony Blair’s ex foreign minister, David Owen, and which portrays Blair’s character as profoundly flawed due to his own hubris. It happens that Lord Owen, besides being a lifelong Labour politician, is also a neurologist.