Arindam Mukherjee's Blog - Posts Tagged "propaganda"
Faking it
Mainstream media? You sure?
I mean, with characters like William Randolph Hearst of New York Journal, who used to say “You furnish the picture and I’ll furnish the war” – how serious can you be? The case stories are quite sordid too. This man’s papers, for example, widely trumpeted the sinking of the Maine as the work of the Spanish. Along with the rape of the Cubans. The US public had welcomed the beginning of the US-Spanish war.
Even during as early as 1898 these guys talked through their arse.
Media’s perception management, like Billy-on-heat, has a one-track-mind. Outright lies, suppression of facts or PR dramas… all must insinuate/ lead to/ perform/ accomplish carnal gratification. Or some form of it. That’s the business.
Billy goat is sensible; he’d stick to the carnal part of it.
Very quickly, a few larger than life events to get the point across…
The US was drawn into World War I by the sinking of the Lusitania, a British ocean liner carrying American passengers – the world knows that. What it doesn’t is that just one week before the incident, then-First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill had written to the President of the Board of Trade that it was “most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany.”
American involvement in World War II.
Are you saying “Pearl Harbour, Pearl Harbour…”? Hang on. A newly-declassified memo is out, and it says that FDR was warned of an impending Japanese attack on Hawaii three whole days before the events at Pearl Harbour.
Piney walon ko piney ka bahana chahiye.
Randhir Kapoor, was it? Smart guy I tell you. He knew it.
Vietnam. Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and American kids – total 3,56,00,00 dead, because of an incident that occurred only in the imagination of the Johnson administration and the pages of the American media.
That of a North-Vietnamese attack on a US Destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin.
In 1991, the world was introduced to the heart wrenching story of Nayirah, a Kuwaiti girl who testified about the atrocities committed by Iraqi forces in Kuwait.
Who was this poor little devastated girl? She was an amateur actor – the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. This movie was directed-produced by Hill & Knowltown – an American PR firm. Following which there was Operation Desert-Storm, directed-produced by White House.
Hill & Knowltown and White House - back to back. Reminds me of Dabangg and Ready.
Few months ago, the BBC featured a massive flag waving crowd of what they said was a celebratory gathering in Tripoli, Libya. Turned out to be some Indian rally with people waving tricolours. The BBC mumbled something. After they were caught.
(Check out the details at Youtube; type “Libya/Incredible media lies”)
You know the recent stories of course. Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, al Qaeda hiding in Afghanistan, Libya’s oppressive and ‘evil’ dictator; and now Iran’s Nuclear Weapons…
Back in our schooldays when some friend would fib, one of us listeners would invariably gesticulate, insinuating a motion of wrapping up.
We just understood.
************
Okay… till about a few years ago, these mainstream hotshots had the regal audacity to look down and pooh-pooh the web. ‘The net? Huh… 3D you know – disorganized, defocused and divided. Upstarts rambling – don’t bother!’
Today they are wondering why they are losing circulation.
Classifieds gone; all up on the web. Retailers gone to the web too – we shop online. Pen friends, editorial letter writers, voluntary contributors, freelance scribes, all gone to the social sites and online publishers. No control over the means of distribution. Earlier you had one paper – now you can access any paper around the globe.
No revenue; naturally no profit either.
On the other hand – morally weak in the spirit. What reporters know, they do not write; what they write, they do not believe. If they try to be candid, the political/business leaders demand their honest-arse for breakfast. Too close to being part of the political parties, too steeped in the artificial impartiality of the newsroom and, invariably too bloody afraid of each other**. And in their dynamics, they keep creating squalid news. Like “Saddam’s WMD”, “Pakistan fighting terror” or “China provoking India”.
And look at the web! Limitless well-argued sites espousing or denouncing every imaginable point of view. Numerous well-researched sites by people who know their fields and are not afraid to talk about them. Want socialist views? Check out Counterpunch. Libertarian by nature? Type mises.org. Want to sample some delightful precision reporting? Asia Times Online. Want news that “you won’t find in CNN”? Try Information Clearing House. Want to know about the world’s wasted wealth and ways to strive for a better future? Go to The Institute for Economic Democracy.
Goddamn encyclopaedias – each one of them! In their topics, archives, research data, intellect pool… you name it. While all along, the mainstream feeds you stuffs that are composed with the assumptive sanguinity that all their gemstones will be sampled by brains with an average IQ less than 50. Tadpoles? Probably.
So for someone like me, ever keen for global news, where do I stand on days I don’t have an access to the net? (Yeah yeah, I am old fashioned. Big deal) I stand on a philosophical threshold.
Let’s catch hold of the fattest pig in the muck – the Sunday Newspaper that comes to my house. Weighs about a kilo. Has given me a rare insight on how to reduce weight.
Here’s how:
Throw out the advert flyers – don’t need another Big Bazaar Furniture Discount News. Throw out the classified – most of the guys/girls anyway don’t get their dream partners; besides, I am married. Then the magazine – unless you fancy knowing what Deepika Padukone fantasizes when she’s stuck in Bombay traffic jams. Out go the Metro pages – Calcutta’s “Lonnndonnn” Diary of potholed roads and malfunctioning airport trolleys. Sports Pages – Team India belly dancing in Australia. Then the main supplement – the one that keeps the star-sign gazers informed on impending romance/escapades with the office boss, while it tracks those local celebrities who got their elbows waxed the previous week.
What am I left with? Annawati and Maya Hazare. And Lady Gaga’s torn fishnet stocking. My Sunday dose of global wisdom --- lean mean and muscles, baby.
And yet they wonder why.
Seriously guys… humour the mainstream media. Some solace to the dying.
N.B.
1. Historic references taken from M Chossudovsky's website Global Research
2. ** - Excerpt from Fred Reed's Blog
I mean, with characters like William Randolph Hearst of New York Journal, who used to say “You furnish the picture and I’ll furnish the war” – how serious can you be? The case stories are quite sordid too. This man’s papers, for example, widely trumpeted the sinking of the Maine as the work of the Spanish. Along with the rape of the Cubans. The US public had welcomed the beginning of the US-Spanish war.
Even during as early as 1898 these guys talked through their arse.
Media’s perception management, like Billy-on-heat, has a one-track-mind. Outright lies, suppression of facts or PR dramas… all must insinuate/ lead to/ perform/ accomplish carnal gratification. Or some form of it. That’s the business.
Billy goat is sensible; he’d stick to the carnal part of it.
Very quickly, a few larger than life events to get the point across…
The US was drawn into World War I by the sinking of the Lusitania, a British ocean liner carrying American passengers – the world knows that. What it doesn’t is that just one week before the incident, then-First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill had written to the President of the Board of Trade that it was “most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany.”
American involvement in World War II.
Are you saying “Pearl Harbour, Pearl Harbour…”? Hang on. A newly-declassified memo is out, and it says that FDR was warned of an impending Japanese attack on Hawaii three whole days before the events at Pearl Harbour.
Piney walon ko piney ka bahana chahiye.
Randhir Kapoor, was it? Smart guy I tell you. He knew it.
Vietnam. Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and American kids – total 3,56,00,00 dead, because of an incident that occurred only in the imagination of the Johnson administration and the pages of the American media.
That of a North-Vietnamese attack on a US Destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin.
In 1991, the world was introduced to the heart wrenching story of Nayirah, a Kuwaiti girl who testified about the atrocities committed by Iraqi forces in Kuwait.
Who was this poor little devastated girl? She was an amateur actor – the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. This movie was directed-produced by Hill & Knowltown – an American PR firm. Following which there was Operation Desert-Storm, directed-produced by White House.
Hill & Knowltown and White House - back to back. Reminds me of Dabangg and Ready.
Few months ago, the BBC featured a massive flag waving crowd of what they said was a celebratory gathering in Tripoli, Libya. Turned out to be some Indian rally with people waving tricolours. The BBC mumbled something. After they were caught.
(Check out the details at Youtube; type “Libya/Incredible media lies”)
You know the recent stories of course. Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, al Qaeda hiding in Afghanistan, Libya’s oppressive and ‘evil’ dictator; and now Iran’s Nuclear Weapons…
Back in our schooldays when some friend would fib, one of us listeners would invariably gesticulate, insinuating a motion of wrapping up.
We just understood.
************
Okay… till about a few years ago, these mainstream hotshots had the regal audacity to look down and pooh-pooh the web. ‘The net? Huh… 3D you know – disorganized, defocused and divided. Upstarts rambling – don’t bother!’
Today they are wondering why they are losing circulation.
Classifieds gone; all up on the web. Retailers gone to the web too – we shop online. Pen friends, editorial letter writers, voluntary contributors, freelance scribes, all gone to the social sites and online publishers. No control over the means of distribution. Earlier you had one paper – now you can access any paper around the globe.
No revenue; naturally no profit either.
On the other hand – morally weak in the spirit. What reporters know, they do not write; what they write, they do not believe. If they try to be candid, the political/business leaders demand their honest-arse for breakfast. Too close to being part of the political parties, too steeped in the artificial impartiality of the newsroom and, invariably too bloody afraid of each other**. And in their dynamics, they keep creating squalid news. Like “Saddam’s WMD”, “Pakistan fighting terror” or “China provoking India”.
And look at the web! Limitless well-argued sites espousing or denouncing every imaginable point of view. Numerous well-researched sites by people who know their fields and are not afraid to talk about them. Want socialist views? Check out Counterpunch. Libertarian by nature? Type mises.org. Want to sample some delightful precision reporting? Asia Times Online. Want news that “you won’t find in CNN”? Try Information Clearing House. Want to know about the world’s wasted wealth and ways to strive for a better future? Go to The Institute for Economic Democracy.
Goddamn encyclopaedias – each one of them! In their topics, archives, research data, intellect pool… you name it. While all along, the mainstream feeds you stuffs that are composed with the assumptive sanguinity that all their gemstones will be sampled by brains with an average IQ less than 50. Tadpoles? Probably.
So for someone like me, ever keen for global news, where do I stand on days I don’t have an access to the net? (Yeah yeah, I am old fashioned. Big deal) I stand on a philosophical threshold.
Let’s catch hold of the fattest pig in the muck – the Sunday Newspaper that comes to my house. Weighs about a kilo. Has given me a rare insight on how to reduce weight.
Here’s how:
Throw out the advert flyers – don’t need another Big Bazaar Furniture Discount News. Throw out the classified – most of the guys/girls anyway don’t get their dream partners; besides, I am married. Then the magazine – unless you fancy knowing what Deepika Padukone fantasizes when she’s stuck in Bombay traffic jams. Out go the Metro pages – Calcutta’s “Lonnndonnn” Diary of potholed roads and malfunctioning airport trolleys. Sports Pages – Team India belly dancing in Australia. Then the main supplement – the one that keeps the star-sign gazers informed on impending romance/escapades with the office boss, while it tracks those local celebrities who got their elbows waxed the previous week.
What am I left with? Annawati and Maya Hazare. And Lady Gaga’s torn fishnet stocking. My Sunday dose of global wisdom --- lean mean and muscles, baby.
And yet they wonder why.
Seriously guys… humour the mainstream media. Some solace to the dying.
N.B.
1. Historic references taken from M Chossudovsky's website Global Research
2. ** - Excerpt from Fred Reed's Blog
