Tag Archives: propaganda

A Note on Integrity in the Press

12 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Free Speech, Journalism, Middle East, Politics, Russia, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

“Born liars.  Shameless liars.  You cannot embarrass them.”

The subjects of my friend’s recent Skype-enabled rant: Al Jazeera, China Today, and Russia Today (RT).

The basis aside from what he’s been reading:

Al Jazeera – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar.

Owned!

China Today – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

China Today (Chinese: 今日中国; pinyin: Jīnrì Zhōngguó), formerly titled China Reconstructs (Chinese: 中国建设;pinyin: Zhōngguó Jiànshè), is a monthly magazine founded in 1949 by Soong Ching-ling in association with Israel Epstein. It is published in Chinese L anguage, English, Spanish, French, Arabic, German and Turkish, and is intended to promote a positive view of the People’s Republic of China and its government to people outside of China.

I haven’t yet done the reading, but let’s call it the “Face of the Nation”, a portal with a role to play, and, at that, a role of immense importance, more so to the People’s Republic of China than to the international reader.

RT (TV network) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It is registered as an autonomous non-profit organization[2][3] funded by the federal budget of Russiathrough the Federal Agency on Press and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation.[4][5]

Basically, RT would seem the Russian “Radio Free America” or U.S. Information Agency — it was born with obligations and today has impressive reach.

What the world on the World Wide Web needs now, of course, might be a few international media assembly giants of trustworthy record.

One exists already.

He may be called the International Reader.

* * *

Whether owned by capitalists or communists, private parties or states, complicated boards of directors — we should take a side trip to Time Warner to look at how that works, and with such as Kingdom Holdings in an influential position — the guts and substance of a news organization resides in its journalists and in the humanity, independence, and integrity they bring to their work.

Some may be aware of their career options and who is sitting in the board room; some on the happy-face beat may be naturally inclined to write always “the best truth possible”; some in their early years may have latched on to the thought that “information is power” so how much cooler would it be to have “power over information” and write to an agenda?

This morning, one of my Facebook buddies asked me to prove Syria launched attacks with chemical weapons because the German intelligence services suggested some disconnects.  I countered with Obama’s more specific mention of 11 neighborhoods attacked and communication intercepts of high-level Syrian chatter over the results and, admitted, my trump card: complete trust in Israeli intelligence reporting.  If any entity on earth has a premium stake in displaying, promoting, and valuing integrity, it’s that bunch.

Even if recordings of intercepts were furnished by governments and published on the Internet, there would be some readers who would claim that as much could have been put together in a recording studio.

I’ll leave those people alone.

Others, perhaps less troubled, seem quick to buy “Rebels Admit Responsibility for Chemical Weapons Attack: Militants tell AP reporter they mishandled Saudi-supplied chemical weapons, causing accident.”

And articles like it reported out in an odd assortment of left and right — but not middle — oriented publications, from Mint to The Blaze (and between: Global Research, Godlike Productions, Missing Peace, Prison Planet, Activist Post, etc.).

Free Cow has gone to the trouble of debunking “Syrian rebels admit to AP reporter they mishandled the chemical weapons given by Saudi Arabia”, while I’ve merely suggested that the one claim that ‘the rebels done it’ seemed supported by two plants: 1) the claim that some kind of toxic chemicals handling accident took place and 2) a video, and a lot of stills from it, allegedly involving a rebel launch crew plus rocket technology plus a matched launching platform on wheels (that too — one claim: two elaborate stories — I mentioned to the Facebook buddy).

What is it with some readers that they will devour such contraptions — and with some writers that they will invent or promote them?

Better yet: what is it with some leaders that they believe that controlling people starts with controlling their information environment — and that they have the muscle in money and thugs to do it?

* * *

“Follow the BBC,” said my Skype friend.  “At least they try to tell the truth.”

I don’t know about that, but at least the Wikipedia entry has been clever about the organization:

Its main responsibility is to provide impartial public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man.

Impartial!

Fair enough.

BBC one hour ago: BBC News – Assad sets out his terms for chemical weapons convention.

So the rebels didn’t have them after all?

😉

I think I’ll take a look at what Reuters has today on Syria.

Well look at this: Putin wrong to blame Syria rebels for chemical attack, Pentagon says | Reuters 9/12/2013.

Additional Reference

Flacking for Dictators in the 21st Century | Freedom House 3/13/2012

Also Mentioned

Fact-Based, In-Depth News | Al Jazeera America

China General Information, China Information, the People’s Republic of China

RT

# # #

Syria’s CW Whodunit

05 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Psychology, Regions, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

I trust the Jews to tell the truth.

When the IDF leaks an intercept that makes its way into Harriet Sherwood’s reporting for The Guardian, I believe it.

Not only has the IDF immense stakes in integrity — in concept, in embrace, and in practice — so does Harriet Sherwood, a career journalist writing for The Guardian and one not particularly noted for favoring anything Israel in her stories (see, for example, CiF Watch’s recent story, “Qalandiya “Martyrdom”: Harriet Sherwood Tweets fromt he Palestinian street,” August 26, 2013 as well as other pieces on the link).

So somebody overheard something — purely circumstantial guff is what that comes to.

So we’ll go on but with something like ‘preponderance of the evidence” for guidance.

* * *

With Maher al Assad well known and with a peerless reputation, some media have dragged out an old familiar (to policy wonks): Bandar bin Sultan.

Beneath the banner, “Saudi Arabia’s ‘Chemical Bandar’ behind the Syrian chemical attacks?”, RT came out shouting, “Nothing the US claims about what happened in Syria adds up. We are being asked to believe an illogical story, when it is much more likely that it was Israel and Saudi Arabia who enabled the Obama Administration to threaten Syria with war” about half a day ago.

Of course, those who may lie know it’s the first one that counts, so going on to say, “The Obama Administration’s intelligence report on Syria was a rehash of Iraq,” seems only fair.

Until one recalls Saddam Hussein to fond memory.

* * *

This finger pointing at the Saudi prince has been joined by, among others DigitalJournal, CounterPunch, OpEd News (from the video on the page and within its first 11 seconds, “It is growing increasingly possible that public outcry might make the imperial force of American exceptionalism with its humanitarian war sites set on Syria back down or at the very least delay”), PressTV, MintPress News, Larouche Pac, InfoWars, etc.

For InfoWars, Paul Joseph Watson wraps up with something between a disclaimer and validation:

UPDATE: Associated Press contacted us to confirm that Dale Gavlak is an AP correspondent, but that her story was not published under the banner of the Associated Press. We didn’t claim this was the case, we merely pointed to Gavlak’s credentials to stress that she is a credible source, being not only an AP correspondent, but also having written for PBS, BBC and Salon.com.

Proving integrity may be as difficult — it certainly is a sensitive issue — as proving dishonesty in a dimension or region in behavior in which plans, good or evil, rife with brutality, deflection, dishonesty, and disingenuous speech or listening, searching, defensive, and protective — are put together out of range of public sight and oversight.

* * *

If rebel forces suffered a mortal oops, it would seem more characteristic in Arab language culture to point the finger at someone else.

If a brigade under Maher al Assad’s command done it, it would be mafia cool to do it — record it, leak it, plaster it across the web — as rebels.

http://youtu.be/dIPpIiKWF70

Syria False Flag Caught On leaked Video Shows FSA Rebels Launch Chemical Attacks

Edited!

Underscored!

Produced!

* * *

Rebel weapons accident (as reported) or chemical weapons launch (as reported and “displayed”)?

Choose.

As long as it’s them.

Because if they didn’t do it . . . .

* * *

From the Wikipedia entry on Bandar:

According to Iran’s PressTV, Bandar was under house arrest for an attempted coup,[35][36] while opposition sources said he was in Dhaban Prison.[34] Some rumors alleged that his coup was exposed by Russian intelligence services because of his frequent trips to Moscow to encourage cooperation against Iran.[34]

Veteran journalist Bill Neely writing about Maher al al-Assad today:

A month ago rebels fired rockets at Bashar’s motorcade as he headed for a Mosque in the centre of Damascus. The attempt to kill the President failed but one of his bodyguards, said to have been a particular favourite of his children Hafez, Karim and Zein was killed.

Many inside and outside Syria believe this may have been the last straw for the hot-headed Maher. No assassination attempt of Bashar al-Assad could go unpunished, especially not one in the heart of the capital.

Neely, Bill.  “Maher al-Assad: The brutal enforcer of the family regime.”  ITV, September 5, 2013.

* * *

A War About Integrity.

Who would have ever thought of that?

A war about language.

The answer to “Syria’s CW Whodunit” may come to light if one intelligence industry or another turns up its cards and reveals its methods, capabilities, and limitations.

“So-and-so said” seems to be working to confuse rather than inform the public.

In addition to the challenge involving “Political Spychology” there is that other political psychology involving the character in personality associated with “malignant narcissism”, the features of which include delusions of grandeur, messianic complexes, paranoia, resistance to criticism, etc. (I’ll lay out a page on the language associated with that subject soon).

Through the lens that looks into dictatorship and across dictatorships, things may look a little different, for the want to control the subjugated by controlling a large information environment (“gaslighting” on a large scale) would seem inseparable from other behaviors having to do with hiding things while deeply controlling others.

Additional Reference

Gavlak, Dale and Yahya Ababneh.  “EXCLUSIVE: Syrians in Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack.”  Mint Press News, August 29, 2013.

Larouche PAC.  “Did Saudi Prince Bandar Give Chemical Weapons to the Syrian Opposition?”  September 1, 2013.

Lee, Peter.  “We Need to Talk About Prince Bandar.”  Counterpunch, September 4, 2013.

Lopez, Ralph.  , “Syrians say Saudi intelligence gave chemical weapons to rebels,” DigitalJournal, September 2, 2013.

Murphy, Dan.  “Syrian chemical weapons claims: How strong is the evidence.”  The Christian Science Monitor, September 3, 2013.

Naureckas, Jim.  “Which Syrian Chemical Attack Account is More Credible.”  FAIR, September 1, 2013.  Of accounts that may be argued point by point, I would call this one the most balanced and conservative with its conclusion:

This humility about the difficulty of reporting on a covert, invisible attack in the midst of a chaotic civil war actually adds to the credibility of the Mint account. It’s those who are most certain about matters of which they clearly lack firsthand knowledge who should make us most skeptical.

PressTV.  “Saudi Prince Bandar behind chemical attack in Syria: Report.”  September 1, 2013.

PressTV.  “Syria gas attack to Saudi-Israeli benefit.”  August 30, 2013:

It’s not such a silly question. After all, the Americans are continually attacking everybody, aren’t they?

Then there’s the Israelis always doing a bit of assassinating, phosphorus spraying and creeping genocide in Palestine (although they’re never particular about confining their activities to Palestine).

The Guardian.  “Harriet Sherwood.”  Recent articles page.

Trainor, Dennis Jr.  “Syrian Rebels Claim Saudi Prince Bandar Responsible for Chemical Weapons Attack.”  OpEd News, September 2, 2013.

Watson, Paul Joseph.  “Rebels Admit Responsibility for Chemical Weapons Attack.”  InfoWars, August 30, 2013.

Related from BackChannels

“Syria – Chemical Warhead Launch Ascribed to 155th Brigade – 4th Armored Division – Syrian Army,” August 28, 2013.

“Syria – Define Your World,” September 2, 2013.

# # #

Syria – Actionable

27 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Journalism, Middle East, Politics, Regions, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Speaking after U.N. chemical weapons experts came under sniper fire on their way to investigate the scene of the attack, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the use of chemical weapons was undeniable and “there is very little doubt in our mind that the Syrian regime is culpable.”

Wroughton, Lesley and Erika Solomon.  “Syria chemical weapons attack: Kerry accuses Assad of ‘a moral obscenity’.”  Chicago Tribune, August 26, 2013.

Russia has no evidence of whether a chemical weapons attack has taken place in Syria or who is responsible, Russian President Vladimir Putin told British Prime Minister David Cameron in a telephone call, according to Cameron’s official website.

Tehran Times.  “Putin to Cameron: No evidence Syria chemical weapons attack occurred.”  August 27, 2013.

* * *

Syria stinks.

Not only does Syria stink for Syrians — keep in mind this latest imbecility takes place in a war zone that has killed more than 100,000 and displaced upwards of four million souls — but it envelopes everyone with a hand in it.

Ariel Cohen, a senior research fellow at the US think tank the Heritage Foundation, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview on Monday that in response to an attack on their Syrian ally, Russia could “expand supply of dual use nuclear technology” to Iran as its nuclear energy company, Rosatom, is anxious to sell more reactors.

Solomon, Ariel Ben.  “Expert: US-led attack on Syria may lead to increased Russian cooperation with Iran.”  The Jerusalem Post, August 27, 2013.

Let’s do business, shall we?

* * *

Because that’s what Syria’s about.

I happen to have the audacity to think the west wants to earn back some part of its investment in oil; Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey would seem to want to expand the Sunni side of the Islamic enterprise in the middle east; Israel could do with a weakened Iran-Hezbollah-Syria structure on its flanks; and God bless him, truly, for Christian Russia, President Vladimir Putin wants to use Iran’s errant ambitions to keep an old Soviet Era cash machine (we could call it “Cash Mir”) chugging along, Ayatollah –> Assad and Associates –> Post-Soviet, Neo-Oligarch Russia.

It wasn’t a chemical warhead that took lives in the Damascus suburbs last week.

It was the money.

Follow it from Doha to Moscow on its twinned tracks and you will have the outline of the implosion I might just refer to hereafter as “Syria Dark Star”.

Two of the world’s three most powerful states have a business interest in their relationship with the Assad regime.

Analysts say both China and Russia have their reasons to maintain good relations with Syria.

Russia is one of Syria’s biggest arms suppliers. And China ranked as Syria’s third-largest importer in 2010, according to data from the European Commission.

Yan, Holly.  “Why China, Russia won’t condemn Syrian regime.”  CNN, February 5, 2012.

What is the effect of that, information-wise?

In one video appearing in an alternative or dissenting context in World Net Daily (WND), you will see a frame referring to Saudi Arabia’s “Saudi Factory for Chlorine and Alkalais” (Sachlo) in relation to last week’s chemical attack — again: follow the money and do note, please, the production values — the addition of music and titles to what should be as straight as timely documentation gets — on two of the three videos promoted.

What’s true?

What’s not true?

The money is true — and the reportage may be consigned to following state presentations.

The sucker punch is NATO vs. Russia all over again but for no good reason apart from from the ginning of foreign trade receipts.

It’s business.

Conscience has no role in it.

With China perhaps fat, smiling, and unperturbed, that same money will loan out to the United States and others who will happily accommodate this absurd state of affairs between themselves.

As the chips make their way around the Grand and Global Poker Table, all that will be missing comes to (green shades on and lick the nub of the pen) about 355 souls permanently and about 3,245 incapacitated or traumatized souls.

BBC.  “MSF-backed hospitals treated Syria ‘chemical victims’.”  August 24, 2013.

* * *

One has to ask of conscience and desire: are the worlds now “imaged” by CNN and RT — presented to us with many questions left unasked — anything like a world in which one should want to live?

The early 2010 “Question More” advertising campaign created for RT in Britain by McCann Erickson was highly controversial.[33]One advertisement showed American President Barack Obama “morphing” into Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and asked: “Who poses the greatest nuclear threat?” The ad was banned in American airports. Another shows a Western soldier “merging” into a Taliban fighter and asks: “Is terror only inflicted by terrorists?”[34] One of RT’s 2010 billboard advertisements won the British Awards for National Newspaper Advertising “Ad of the Month.”[35]

Wikipedia.  “RT”.

CNNi’s pursuit of and reliance on revenue from Middle East regimes increased significantly after the 2008 financial crisis, which caused the network to suffer significant losses in corporate sponsorships. It thus pursued all-new, journalistically dubious ways to earn revenue from governments around the world. Bahrain has been one of the most aggressive government exploiters of the opportunities presented by CNNi.

Greenwald, Glenn.  “CNN and the business of state-sponsored TV news.”  The Guardian, September 4, 2012.

The human rights-oriented modifications that may come to autocratic states will neither bring to them nor emulate democracy.

That’s life.

However, bending and twisting it some in journalism to suit The Money — yes, you have just been dragged from chemical weapons reports into international trade and on to integrity in journalism (even from my Second Row Seat to History) — will erode and eventually destroy democracy.

American conservatives know the litany: “Without the First Amendment, all of the others are useless.”

Add to it: without a press free of all but ambitious good conscience and readers, there will be no freedom.

Only political programs and programmers — God give them all the money they want because on this most dismal, obscene, and tragic of today’s war stories, The Money would seem the hidden alpha-omega of all motivation, coverage, and presentation — and the feckless programmed, which would be everyone else.

Additional Reference

CBS/AP.  “Fearing a U.S. strike, Syria warns of global ‘chaos’.”  August 27, 2013.

Corsi, Jerome R.  “Evidence: Syria Gas Attack Work of U.S. Allies.”  WND, August 26, 2013.

CNN Press Room.  “CNN International’s Response to the Guardian — Update.”  September 5, 2012.

Whether with CNN or RT, we have journalists working in the vicinity of the wheels of history, which for this BackChannels post seems to be a Qatar-backed Sunni-NATO alliance helped into being by the need to address the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran that is in turn supported, in part, by Syria’s geopolitical view and Russian greed (we know for Putin that cooperation is not about the endorsement of Shiite Islam as laid down by Ayatollah Khamenei).   While that plays, the journalism story plays too, for whether in Russia, the United States, or elsewhere in the world authentically or nominally subscribed to open democracy, if one cannot trust the main run of journalists to report “accurately, clearly, and completely” — add “relentlessly” — on the stories of their day, then one returns to subjugation, and whether with such power cloaked in the name of God or for the cause of Gold makes not the least difference.

Eltsov, Peter.  “Putin Stumps for the Orthodox Church in a Film Celebrating the Kievan Rus Anniversary.”  The Atlantic, July 29, 2013.

Keath, Lee and Zeina Karam.  “Syria Chemical Weapons: UN Inspectors Probe Allegations of Nerve Gas Attack.”  Huffington Post, August 26, 2013.

Stack, Liam.  “Videos Show Aftermath of Possible Syrian Chemical Attack in March.”  The Lede, The New York Times, April 25, 2013.

Walker, Peter and Tom McCarthy.  “Syria: US secretary of state John Kerry calls chemical attack ‘cowardly crime’ – as it happened.”  The Guardian, August 26, 2013.

# # #

Syria – Note – Manipulating Hearts and Minds

11 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Psychology, Regions, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

“Go and ask the people in the streets whether there a liberated town or city anywhere in Syria that is ruled as efficiently as this one,” he boasted. “There is electricity, water and bread and security. Inshallah, this will be the nucleus of a new Syrian Islamic caliphate!”

Abdul-Ahad, Ghaith.  “Syria’s al-Nusra Front — ruthless, organised, and taking control.” The Guardian, July 10, 2013.

“Out, out, out, the (Islamic) State (of Iraq and Syria) must get out,” protesters shouted at a rally in the northern town of Manbij this week, referring to an Al-Qaeda front group.
The video of the demonstration is one of many showing how civilians and mainstream rebel fighters alike are turning against the more hardline Islamist factions.

Assif, Serene. “Syria jihadists lose support as abuses mount.” Fox News, July 22, 2013.

* * *

Every story that has appeal, whether fact or fiction, has a moral center, and the writer who can tease it out fast has got a hooked reader.

This is about where we started with the Syrian revolt — a little more than two years ago, a sorry fact reflected in the statement, “1300 people have been killed since the protests began”):

http://youtu.be/MdZOQLXg9zs

Then almost two years and 90,000 corpses later, we get to the guy intent on frightening his foes in the medieval way (well, take it back to ancient Greece or earlier) by carving out a man’s chest cavity, grabbing an organ, and taking a bite or appearing so (see Paul Wood’s “Face-to-face with Abu Sakkar, Syria’s ‘heart-eating cannibal’,” BBC, July 3, 2013).

At the moment, thereabouts, Arab and Russian media seem to be playing “hot potato” over who has got the chemical weapons, whose side is more brutal, and whose side is more deserving in regard to winning one for modernity.

* * *

To fill out that last statement a bit, I may note an RT blog said today, “M16 warning: ‘Catastrophe’ if chemical weapons fall into Al-Qaeda hands” (RT, July 11, 2013).

Back in April, however, the story seemed to have been running in the other direction.  Al Jazeera’s header (April 26, 2013): “Suspicion grows over Syria chemical weapons: UK prime minister backs US spy agencies’ assessment that Damascus likely to have used sarin gas against civilians.”

Again, come forward on the latest toss of the hot potato:

Moscow now appears to have conclusive evidence that it is the rebels who are guilty of the March chemical attack in Aleppo which killed dozens of Syrians. This comes as the United States continues to put the blame on the Assad government. However, Corbyn says that any such proof may not bring the Syrian conflict any closer to a resolution.

RT.  “Hard evidence of chemical weapons use ‘does not solve Syrian issue’.”  Op-ed and interview with Jeremy Corbyn, MP, British Labour Party, July 11, 2013.

* * *

The “moral center” in Syria’s unfolding tragedy revolves around barbarism and cruelty, fascism and totalitarianism, and then among those holding up the cash and sending in the weapons, some effort to prove more likely to be kind when the tide turns their way.  While Qatari and NATO interests have pointed their fingers at the Assad regime and its chemical weapons stores, Russia, presumably sided with Assad — but it’s hard to tell with the quiet exit that has left Tartus abandoned —  and tolerant about Iran, points back at rebel chemists (see, for example, “Syria rebels made own sarin gas, says Russia,” Al Jazeera, July 10, 2013).

In earlier days, the same would have had a perfect villain in Maher al-Assad — I think there’s still on the web a video of him allegedly shooting across a street into a crowd of passersby (found it)  — but his presence has been dimmed in the theater, and in his place one may find grand Syrian defense recruiting videos composed in the old muscular Soviet way (the video that ends this post may say more about that than I will here).

In and around Syria, those who may pretend their hands are clean must know that brutality loses, the tyrannical will not be tolerated, and the cruel will not go unpunished.

Anti-Assad footage published today:

http://youtu.be/lKlVNy-QVis

The next opens with a title slate claiming, “Syrian women had no choice but to carry weapons and train on using them to defend themselves and families from the Wahhabi Sex Jihadists, they joined the National Defense Forces.”

Enjoy the music!

http://youtu.be/CRHtNZh88KM

Additional Reference

Wheeler, William.  “Why the World’s ‘Responsibility to Protect” Extends to Libya But Not Syria.”  Pulitzer Center, April 12, 2012.

# # #

Reference: “Accusation in a Mirror”

12 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Politics, Psychology

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

“One of the most astonishing discoveries in the history of genocide studies was the Note Relative à la Propagande d’Expansion et de Recrutement (the “Note”), a mimeographed document found in Butare prefecture in the wake of the Rwandan genocide. The Note, which draws from Goebbels, Lenin, and others, is a manual of the rhetorical methods that could be used to inflame ordinary people to attack their countrymen.”

Marcus, Kenneth L.  “Accusation in a Mirror.”  Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, 43 (2012): 357-393.  PDF published via Loyola Law eCommons.

In practice, the technique has become visible and easy to spot in peace / hate-peace group chatyping.

As awful as the consequences intended by “Accusation in a Mirror” (AiM) may be, the technique fits well with other forms of disingenuous speech, hate speech, and sophistry.  Put it one the same page as “blood libel” and common slander.

Motivation?

Somebody thinks they’re going to get something by way of the sheer beauty and force of their will.

Such lose their conscience, their humanity, their restraints, and while they and their people may pay for it, disingenuous speech, motivated, so I suspect, by the want of self-aggrandizement powered by hate, leads always to great suffering.  When the practitioners are stopped in their tracks, related suffering abate, but it takes a while to understand this.

Related Reference

Truman Web Design.  “Kangura magazine.”  I believe I found this one the web at least as far back as 2006.  The home page starts this way: 

“Foreign invaders, plundering the rich earth of Rwanda.  Bloodthirsty parasites, who prefer exploitation to honest labor. An elite minority, enjoying influence out of all proportion to their numbers—ferreting their way into the highest-paying jobs, monopolizing the banking system, the educational system, even the very government to ensure the soft life for themselves and their kin.  Scheming, shrewd and crafty.  Without scruples. Without conscience.  Fearsome, loathsome, cunning as a cockroach.  Intent on the destruction of every hard-working member of the native people to whom the country rightfully belongs. If they were in your country, wouldn’t you want to be warned? Wouldn’t you read the newspaper each morning,wouldn’t you keep all the radios on?”

 The Truman Web Design-prefaced site (the subset is a “~” extended location) on the use of propaganda in the Rwandan Genocide also discusses, in addition to Kangura Magazine, RTLM Radio and media coverage of the event.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) maintains a similar report online: “Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda.” Similar sub-section: “Propaganda and Practice”.

Leets, Laura.  “Experiencing Hate Speech: Perceptions and Responses to Anti-Semitism and Antigay Speech.”  Journal of Social Issues, 58:2 (pp. 341-361), The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, 2002.  The abstract notes (this is a partial quotation), “A content analysis of the accounts produced the following patterns: (a) short- and long-term consequences mirrored a three-stage sequence found within other traumatic experiences; (b) respondents described motives as enduring, not situational, states; (c) the most common response strategies were passive; and (d) participants often sought support. The discussion focuses on implications for interventions that may mitigate negative consequences of hate speech.”

FTAC – A Note on the Dark Mirror in Language

20 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Language contains a dark mirror.

It allows or even tricks Hutu into accusing Tutsi of planning the genocide of the Hutu, but when this happens, it is actually the Hutu who have in mind the slaughter of the Tutsi in their entirety.

The dark mirror in language has a poisonous base: all it takes, it seems, is a small suggestion that God favors . . . blue eyes, for example, not green, and an elaborating process takes over . . . blue eyes and blonde, pure of heart and race, superior to all the rest of mankind, and ready to prove it out of factories melting ore and transforming it into cold steel.

The dark mirror in language confuses the mind: it convinces the Ayatollah dressed in white that he is God’s emissary today even while he runs Evin Prison and doles out patronage to thugs who then keep suppressed the more true revolutionary forces of Iran; it convinces Hamas who agreeing to truce in 2009 that it may continue launching rockets at Israeli residential space — more than 1,000 of such attacks in 2012 alone — because it believes it has a divine right and cause, one that allows it to exceed limits not only as regards its ambitions for the Jews (articulated: genocide right to the last Jew hiding behind a rock or tree) but in regard to the minds and bodies of its own children and women whom it keeps placed around its weapons and materiel stores and before itself in battle.

The Jewish story begins not with conquest but with fleeing an ugly condition — enslavement in Egypt under Pharaoh.  With the direct intercession of God and with the company of a great mixed multitude. Canaan and the Canaanites were in the future and for 40 years the hard scrabble of desert was to be the reward for leaving Egypt.

In the archaeology, Canaanite and Hebrew artifacts have been found in proximity, but, not yet, evidence of a battle royal, suggesting perhaps that the story is an idealization, a template, an illustration of an historic change in ways of life. Again, for reading, The Peace and Violence of Judaism (Oxford University Press) provides a straightforward compilation, neither always pretty nor ugly, of the defense and military doctrine of the Israelite.

For the record, about 20 percent of the population of modern Israel is Muslim and Muslims at their own discretion may elect to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces, and some do.

Reference

Beno, Goel.  “Muslim woman: Arabs must enlist in IDF.”  YNet News, June 28, 2012.

Hoffman, Jordan.  “His deep, dark secret: He’s Arab, Muslim and serves in the IDF.” The Times of Israel, November 10, 2012.

Jewish Virtual Library.  “Biblical Jerusalem: From Canaanite City to Israelite Capital”.

Oppenheim, James S.  “Jews, Muslims, and the Halls of Dark Mirrors.”  Oppenheim Arts & Letters, July 7, 2009.  Excerpt:

“Muslims who determine the worth of women as half that of men . . . Jews who would determine that their study of the All may require (lesser) others to support them: these may be the first distorted mirrors in the hall of dark mirrors that would make Hamas and the haredi liberating forces–and all others “kafir”–such are the opposite mirrors that ascribe to the other one’s own worst and most distorted contemplations.

Those mirrors are there because the writers of the monotheist foundation texts found a way to elevate their audiences into an atmosphere engineered around divine right.  Jews and the gentiles, Believers and the “kafir”, the righteous and holy and the sinners–how deep those divides that for their existence rely on not much more than stubborn ideation or “habits of mind” and the political power that comes of wielding intellectual levers and wedges that divide some humans from others in accord with their literary endowments.”

My perception of conditions have change but not my comprehension of the natural basis for the pursuit of health, individuation, and freedom.

Ruda, Bennett.  “Muslims in the IDF–It’s Not Just the Druse.”  Daled Amos, July 29, 2011.

Science News.  “Earliest Known Hebrew Text in Proto-Canaanite Script Discovered in Area Where “David Slew Goliath.”  Science Daily, November 3, 2008.  Related update: Boyle, Alan.  “3,000-year-old artifacts reveal history behind biblical David and Goliath.”  Cosmic Log on NBC News, May 8, 2012.

Smith, Peter.  “Christian Arab youth come under fire over desire to enlist in IDF.”  The Right Context, November 3, 2012.

Wikipedia.  “Israel Defense Forces”.  Subsection: “Minorities in the IDF”.

Wikipedia.  “Merneptah Stele“.

Wikipedia.  “Muslim supporters of Israel”.

Yitzhaki, Michal Yaakov.  “An Officer and a Muslim Zionist.”  Israel Hayom, September 7, 2012.

Yossi, Yehoshua.  “First female Arab soldier joints elite unit 669.”  YNet News, April 4, 2008.

YouTube.  “Muslims soldiers serving in the Israeli Army – Audio (1/2)”.  Posted September 11, 2009.

http://youtu.be/8ax72djptF4

“I’m joining the army in order to make a change, to make peace between the nations.” From the film Ameer Got His Gun.  

FTAC – Response To An Adverse Claim About Muslims in Burma

25 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

When a writer has “done the homework” but withheld information in order to throw mud on a human target for entertainment and manipulation of even less informed minds, that’s evil.  When a writer has not done the homework, has packed together the same mudball for the same audience, that’s not only evil, it’s cosmically pernicious.

At least that how I feel about propaganda and ignorance both.

* * *

Background on Burma: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20083287

The government’s awful; the monks have a dark side; this particular Muslim sect has been caught a long time between its inhospitable “landing zone” and the sea — and then comes to this, so it seems, the AQ complex of deeply fragile, equally narcissistic and sociopathic ideation. What seems like a very dark space in cultural psychology may be less so in anthropological views.

“The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority living in northern Rakhine state in Western Myanmar. They face religious and ethnic discrimination by Myanmar’s military regime, which refuses to recognize the Rohingya as Myanmar citizens. The Rohingya people are not considered one of 135 legally recognized ethnic minority groups in Myanmar. Myanmar considers them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, but they have lived in Myanmar for centuries, and Bangladesh will not accept them as its citizens.”

http://www.genocidewatch.org/myanmar.html

* * *

Be Careful of the Truth – Crucifixion in Yemen Appears True

31 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Yemen

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

On August 22, 2012, I picked up a story making the rounds on Facebook having to do with reporting the emergence of crucifixion in Egypt, and I looked into it (“Be Careful of the Truth — Crucified Christians in Egypt — Not Corroborated”).

A downloaded copy of the photograph accompanying the claim yielded no IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) data, and continued web searching led me to what I considered a reliable debunking.

However, with credit extended to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), not only the picture but a video clip of the same appeared in relation to a spy caught having betrayed an Islamist group in Yemen.

I saw it first here on the Blazing Cat Fur blog, n.d.

And found a listing for something at least like it here:

#3552 – Man Crucified by Al-Qaeda in Yemen – Viewer Discretion Advised
The Internet – August 27, 2012 – 01:14

A subscription is required to view it — same or different, but same category — on the MEMRI site, and I’m looking into that.

The flip with dates (August 22, first round; August 27, posted by MEMRI; by August 30, well along in the anti-Jihad industry) I take as indicative of how information continues to crawl off the street and up to the web from the world’s most remote locales.

In the meantime, the Blogosphere seems to have picked it up and gotten its facts straight — “Sheik Yer Mami” (Winds of Jihad) notes a Jihad source on YouTube as a  primary location (see “Crucifixion in Yemen,” August 30, 2012 for the video plus that detail).

I suspect most believe the “War on Terror” involves neutralizing a number of violent moral entrepreneurs and their networks, but to my mind that’s a small part of a much, much larger story having to do with the development, installation, and continuing support of certain critical and laudable values and virtues worldwide, starting with the definition of “good conscience” (it’s not mapped the same for  everywhere, one reason I’ve launched this blog)) and then the possession by persons and groups of credibility and integrity within themselves and in relation to other persons across a world rapidly integrating its communicating and information resources and content.

War may be called deception; taqiyya may be advised: evil, however, begins with such easily digested lies and the lies to come from having swallowed both.

In war, deception may be a tactic, but wars are about other things — e.g., the possession of resources; the displacement, modification, or termination of cultures and their customs and languages — and “taqiyya”, ever loosely accessed (one well may lie to save life — for the western mind, there’s not much need to put a label on that), seems only to serve to make liars out of people who would otherwise be forthright.

When an overzealous, special interest press chooses to copy a photograph appearing in one context or application in an event alleged to have taken place elsewhere, it corrupts, dishonors, and sabotages itself.

Yesterday in Eritrea; yesterday in Somalia; yesterday in Waziristan; yesterday in Gaza: aggressive spoilers, parties to war, parties to cultural imperialism or annihilation (both) in the name of one cause or another, could, would, and did, with impunity, fabricate stories a very few or none could check.  Their common intention (never mind ends): power through the manipulation of perception in line with  mercenary agendas.

For the more remote regions of our planet, that thing called “yesterday” is closing, swept away by camera phones, tablets with recorders, and the World Wide Web.

It may go shaking its fists.

It may go slowly.

However difficult it may be to see it; however short our lives in comparison to such processes — and this across a frontier unique in recorded history, i.e., a frontier about mind globally — the past that has been past for some time will recede.

“I C U”.

Remember that?

Do.