Trump did something similar in 2018 after his Singapore Summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim JongUn. When Fox News' Brett Baier raised the question in an interview about "Kim's oppression of his own people", Trump said: “Yeah, but so have a lot of other people have done some really bad things.” Trump's straight talk continues to inflame passions in the US establishment.
Both O'Reilly and Baier were essentially repeating the standard American narrative that wants the world to believe that "we (Americans) are the good guys and those opposing America are the bad guys".
Trump, an unconventional American leader, displayed rare candor in his responses. The American media and "research scholars", managed by the "Deep State", sharply criticized Trump and continued to parrot the standard American narrative asserting that "we're the good guys" while vilifying Vladimir Putin, Kim JongUn and other leaders and countries designated as "enemies".
Young and Barbaric:
Trump appears ready to drop all pretenses of US being "the good guys" standing for "freedom, democracy and human rights". He is not alone in his assertion that "our country (United States) is not so innocent". George Friedman, the founder of Stratfor which describes itself as "American geopolitical intelligence platform", is the ultimate "Deep State" insider in America. Friedman acknowledges that "America, like Europe in sixteenth century, is still barbaric, a description, not a moral judgment. Its culture is unformed. Its will is powerful. Its emotions drive it in different and contradictory directions."
Friedman argues that "perhaps more than for any other country, the US grand strategy is about war, and the interaction between war and economic life. The United States is historically a warlike country. The nation has been directly or indirectly at war for most of of its existence...the war of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam War and Desert Storm. And the US has been constantly at war in Afghanistan and Iraq since the beginning of this century."
More recently, the United States' interventions in the Middle East have destabilized and devastated Libya and Syria and created a major humanitarian crisis. Tens of thousands have died and millions rendered homeless and trying to flee hunger and violence.
Narrative Promotion:
The first thing in creating a narrative is the basic story supported by effective language and vocabulary. It is fleshed out by writers, poets, musicians and artists. The basic American narrative goes like this: America stands for freedom, democracy and human rights. It is a force for all that is good in the world. Those who oppose America are the "bad guys".
The narrative is then widely disseminated, promoted and incessantly repeated by Washington think tanks, book authors, major newspaper reporters and editors, mainstream journalists, television channels and popular entertainment platforms.
Talking points are developed and shared to defend against any criticisms. Inconvenient truths are obfuscated. Those who accept the talking points are rewarded and those who persist in criticisms are isolated and punished. Rewards come in the form of funding and access. Punishments are handed out by orchestrating attacks by peers and by denying funds and access.
Controlling the Narrative:
The United States government funds think tanks, hires consultants and directly and indirectly influences mass media and popular entertainment platforms to control and promote its "good guys" narrative and to vilify those seen as competitors.
1. Think Tanks: Woodrow Wilson Center, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, US Institute of Peace (USIP), Rand Corporation and a several others are partially or fully funded by the US government. These are supplemented by dozens of other think tanks funded by major US corporations which have a stake in promoting a positive global image of the United States. These organizations organize conferences, publish books and "research papers" and offer scholarships to promote the American "good guys" narrative globally. They have both resident and non-resident "scholars", including some from developing countries like Pakistan. Some of the Pakistani "scholars" working for Washington think tanks also work for major media houses in Pakistan. These "scholars" are widely quoted by the media on issues relating to US-Pakistan relations.
2. News Media: Veteran American journalist Carl Bernstein, famous for his reporting on Watergate along with Bob Woodward, investigated CIA's use of the American media and wrote a piece describing "How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up". Here's what he said:
"Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UPI), Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune".
3. Popular Entertainment: It has been suggested that Hollywood has been working with the United States government for a long time. Some have said that Hollywood is "the unofficial ministry of propaganda for the Pentagon". Information obtained under FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) confirms that thousands of Hollywood films have received backing from the CIA and the US Department of Defense and other US agencies to promote America's "good guy" narrative. These include 24, Army Wives, Flight 93, Homeland, Ice Road Truckers, NCIS, Transformers, Iron Man, Terminator, etc.
Documents obtained recently under FOIA show that the relationship between the US national security establishment and American entertainment businesses is much deeper and more political than ever acknowledged.
4. Books and Literature: Starting with the Cold War, the American CIA has infiltrated and influenced books and literature to promote the American official "good guys" narrative. "Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World's Best Writers" by Joel Whitney reveals how great writers such as Baldwin, Márquez, and Hemingway were recruited as soldiers in Cold War.
Editors of top literary magazines were used as a vehicle for this infiltration. The first time the CIA's connections to the Paris Review and two dozen other magazines came to light was in 1966. The CIA used multiple guises to financially support young, promising writers as part of a cultural propaganda strategy with literary outposts around the world.
Summary:
The United States government has developed and aggressively controls and promotes America's standard narrative that claims "we are the good guys and those opposing us are the bad guys". This narrative glosses over the history of native American genocide, enslavement of Africans and the CIA sponsored assassinations, coups and proxy wars in the developing world. In a couple of recent interviews, US President Donald Trump has acknowledged the problems with the American narrative. Nevertheless, the American narrative is promoted using a multi-pronged strategy that includes the use of think tanks, popular entertainment, books and literature and the mainstream media.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
South Asia Investor Review
Gates Straight Talk on Pakistan
Hollywood: America's Unofficial Ministry of Propaganda
Free Speech: Myth or Reality?
Social Media Tribalism
Social Media: Blessing or Curse For Pakistan?
Planted Stories in Media
Indian BJP Troll Farm
Kulbhushan Jadhav Caught in Balochistan
The Story of Pakistan's M8 Motorway
Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel
Riaz Sahib,
ReplyDeleteThis is a good article. I have felt the same. US establishment is a beneficiary of the non stop wars US gets involved in the world. A one week campaign of bombing from US aur Riad this career cost several billion dollars.
Then multiply it by so many wars and so many years. The arms manufacturers have busy production lines.
Trump also wants to pull out of all these wars. But neo cons like Bolton were dragging him to another war in Iran. These pro Zionist neocons tried every thing to start a war there.
What is unusual is that while many praise Trump for standing up to American establishment, they praise Pakistani establishment for prevailing over the govt. there.
If establishment is the beneficiary of war in this country, is that not so in Pakistan and India too?
RA: "What is unusual is that while many praise Trump for standing up to American establishment, they praise Pakistani establishment for prevailing over the govt. there."
ReplyDeleteMy post is not meant as a total endorsement of Trump’s presidency. On balance, I think his policies are hurting the US more than they are helping.
So challenging the establishment is not necessarily a good thing in all situations
Typos:
ReplyDeleteA one week campaign of bombing over Libya from US aircraft carrier cost several billion dollars.
US peoples being made fools via medias propoganda.. Americans don't bother to see other side of the wall..That's why Pentagon..CIA .US civil and military Establishment easily developed any fall ..lie narrative..which they sell to Americans...But other world peoples now don't buy US narrative.. except some dictator type leaders..Trump may be a good businessman..but he can't be good as President of a super Power..
ReplyDelete#Trump’s Baffling Plan to Pillage #Syria’s #Oil. Trump: “We may have to fight for the oil. It’s O.K.” #energy #MiddleEast #Arab https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-baffling-plan-to-pillage-syrias-oil
ReplyDeleteresident Trump dropped a stunner during his rambling press conference, on Sunday, after announcing the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State leader, in a U.S. raid. In a major policy flip-flop, the President said that he is not only keeping American forces in Syria to “secure” its oil fields, he is willing to go to war over them. “We may have to fight for the oil. It’s O.K.,” he said. “Maybe somebody else wants the oil, in which case they have a hell of a fight. But there’s massive amounts of oil.” The United States, he added, should be able to take some of Syria’s oil. “What I intend to do, perhaps, is make a deal with an ExxonMobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly,” he said. The goal would be to “spread out the wealth.”
The President was wrong on so many counts. Seizing the oil, after twice ordering all U.S. troops out of Syria, violates a basic international treaty on war. It may amount to pillaging—even piracy, according to legal experts and former senior military commanders. “Bring in US oil companies to modernize the field. WHAT ARE WE BECOMING.... PIRATES?” General Barry McCaffrey (Ret.), who commanded a mechanized Army division in Iraq during the Gulf War, tweeted.
Trump’s new policy may also violate the military authorization from Congress which allowed the United States to enter Syria. It certainly violates Syrian sovereignty. “If ISIS is defeated we lack Congressional authority to stay,” McCaffrey tweeted. “The oil belongs to Syria.”
Trump’s suggestion that the U.S. could expropriate a portion of Syria’s oil “sounds like the international crime of pillage,” Ryan Goodman, a former special legal counsel at the Department of Defense who is now at the New York University School of Law, said. Any such move is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and by the precedents set by the United Nations war-crimes tribunals that the U.S. helped establish in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. “U.S. military commanders who engaged in pillaging Syria’s oil would risk criminal liability under the U.S. War Crimes Act,” Goodman said. The international rules of war, he added, were designed “to deter nations from engaging in predatory wars to seize other countries’ natural resources.”
Most of all, the new policy—which may keep some five hundred American troops in Syria—wasn’t well thought out, U.S. officials and Middle East experts told me. “It was seat-of-the-pants type shit,” a U.S. official said. Another told me, “To say the oil stuff isn’t thought through is an understatement. The N.S.C. is scrambling to build policy around the President’s tweets.” Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma, described it as “cockamamie.”
What’s particularly baffling is that Syria now produces a piddling amount of oil—about as much as Utah. “Syrian oil was not significant at all to the world market. It was very small,” Daniel Yergin, an energy expert and vice-chairman of IHS Markit, told me. At its peak, Syria produced less than four hundred thousand barrels a day, which generated about a quarter of government revenues. But, as a result of the eight-year civil war and U.S. air strikes on oil installations seized by isis, production is down ninety per cent, to only about forty-thousand barrels per day, Yergin said. That’s a negligible amount on global markets—inadequate even for Syria’s domestic needs.
After isis seized a third of Syrian territory, in 2014, oil became the financial lifeblood for the isis caliphate. “Syrian oil took on global interest when it became a machine for generating revenue for isis,” Yergin said. As the caliphate collapsed, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces took over running the fields. Oil revenues supported its military and civilian programs.
Lyrics by Prince
ReplyDeleteLand of the free, home of the brave
Oops, I mean
Land of the free, home of the slave
Get down on your knees, hit me
-----------------
Welcome to America
Where you can fail at your job, get fired, rehired
And get a seven hundred billion dollar tip
Come on in, sit right down
And fill up your pockets, yeah
Mass media, information overload
Welcome to America
(The following message is brought to you by Viacom)
Distracted by the features of the iPhone
(Got an application for each of situation)
In other words, taken by a pretty face
Somebody's watching you (I see you, I see you)
Welcome to America
Hook up later at the iPad
And we can meet at my place (welcome to America)
Welcome (welcome to America)
To America
Where everything and nothing that Google says is hip
(The sales tax for the following items)
(Will be raised immediately, cigarettes)
We will not raise your taxes
Read our lips
Welcome to America (America)
Welcome to the big show (to America)
Everybody's looking for something
When there ain't no place to go (welcome to America)
Except inside America (America)
That's the only place I know (to America)
Transformation happens deep within, yes or no?
Yes
Welcome to America
One of our greatest exports was a thing called jazz
You think today's music will last?
(Dismantle all monopolies)
(Dismantle all monopolies)
Welcome to America
Welcome
Hope and change, everything takes forever
And truth is a new minority (truth)
Oh, welcome to America
Welcome to America
Today we'd like to discuss America's plan to fix the educational system
The pledge of allegiance will now read as follows
I pledge allegiance to the earth of the United States of the Universe
Welcome to America
There is no arguing with the book (when am I gonna learn something new?)
There is no arguing with the book (who's gonna teach it to me, you?)
There is no arguing with the book (what's that outside my windowsill)
There is no (could it be?) Arguing (our free will?)
You say yes, I say no, yet love flows
America can provide many opportunities
For the young female who wishes to work (for the state)
For her own advancement up from the underclass to become one
Welcome to America
Go to school to become a celebrity
(F-A-M-O-U-S) but don't be late
And everybody and they mama got a sex tape
Welcome to America
We snatch bass players, not purses
Keep playing, it gets worse
Land of the free, home of the brave
Oops, I mean
Land of the free, home of the slave
Get down on your knees, hit me
Welcome to America
Welcome to the big show
Everybody's looking for something
When there ain't no place to go (that's it y'all)
Except inside America
That's the only place I know (Chinese)
Transformation happens deep within, yes or no? (Or get down on your knees)
Source: LyricFind
George W. Bush's Freudian Slip on #Ukraine: "Brutal Invasion of #Iraq". Ex #US president condemned #Putin's "brutal, unjustified invasion of Iraq" and then blamed the slip on age. #Russia https://youtu.be/bZKWn3RcPZU
ReplyDeleteExcerpts of McNamara, Craig. Because Our Fathers Lied (pp. 195-196). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.
ReplyDeleteWe sat in the front row. My kids were on either side of me. As crazy as it seems, I was prepared to climb up on the stage and tackle anyone who came near him. I wasn’t in the same condition that I’d been in as the MVP of my high school football team, but I’d been farming for the past quarter century. I felt I was strong enough. When Dad came out onstage, the auditorium fell silent. The possibility of confrontation—the awkwardness and the silent threat—was in the air like electricity before a thunderstorm. The moderator showed selected clips from The Fog of War. The clips focused on my father’s “Eleven Lessons,” first enumerated in his memoir, In Retrospect, and later used by Errol Morris as a through line for the film. The lessons are: Empathize with your enemy. Rationality alone will not save us. There’s something beyond one’s self. Maximize efficiency. Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Get the data. Belief and seeing are both often wrong. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil. Never say never. You can’t change human nature. During the conversation that followed, Mark Danner pushed my father on these lessons, attempting to draw out a comparison with Iraq. At one point, Danner asked specifically whether the lessons from the Vietnam War should be applied to America’s impending adventure in 2003. My father steadfastly refused to comment. He gave various reasons—among them that it could pose a risk to American soldiers in the field. He also said that ex-cabinet members shouldn’t comment on the jobs current cabinet members are doing. He would repeat these nonanswers to the Iraq question in numerous other interviews. For those of us who despised Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and felt the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, it was frustrating that Robert McNamara wouldn’t comment directly. It brought back painful memories of his silence after 1968. There had been such hope and such disappointment. “We human beings killed a hundred and sixty million other human beings in the twentieth century,” he said. He was almost shouting, jabbing his finger at Mark Danner. “Is that what we want in this century?” In classic fashion, Dad answered his own question. “I don’t think so!” At one point, Danner asked Dad how he dealt with reporters during difficult press conferences as secretary of defense. Dad said, “Don’t answer the question they asked. Answer the question you wish they’d asked.” Does this mean tell a lie? Growing up in his house, with his rules, I considered him to be an honest person. I’m sure I can remember him saying “Don’t tell lies” when I was a little kid. I’m sure that I passed on to my own children the same lesson. How could someone as intelligent as Dad fail to see the contradiction? Maybe his hypocrisy has to do with Lesson Number Three. That’s the one that matters most to me. I think it’s the one he most failed to live up to.
-------------
I once asked Errol what it was like to spend so much time with my father. He responded that he felt my father was thoughtful and self-doubting: a decent and magnificent man, a person he deeply respected and learned a lot from. He liked him. However, he also told me that he felt conflicted about the decisions my father made as secretary of defense. He said that he considered Dad a war criminal. I wondered, How could you feel even the most remote affection for a war criminal? In maybe the same conversation, I expressed to Errol my dismay over the run-up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I told him that I considered men like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz to be evil. I felt hatred for these men—the last of whom had a career very similar to my father’s, because it also included a tenure at the World Bank.
McNamara, Craig. Because Our Fathers Lied (pp. 197-198). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.
Ben Norton
ReplyDelete@BenjaminNorton
The US military launched at least 251 foreign interventions from 1991 to 2022.
This is according to a report from the US government's own Congressional Research Service.
I went through the data and created a map showing just how vast the meddling is: https://multipolarista.com/2022/09/13/us-251-military-interventions-1991/ https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1569800676678696960?s=20&t=YnIgUPmGWNRNOFxTpqKvCQ
Pentagon Orders Review of Its Overseas Social Media Campaigns
ReplyDeleteThe move comes after Twitter and Facebook shut down misleading accounts that they determined were sending messages to promote U.S. foreign policy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/us/politics/pentagon-social-media.html
WASHINGTON — White House officials told the military that they were concerned about its efforts to spread pro-American messaging on social media, prompting the Pentagon to order a review of secretive operations to influence populations overseas, U.S. officials said.
The review follows a decision by Twitter and Facebook over the summer to shut down misleading accounts that they determined were sending messages about U.S. foreign policy interests abroad.
The Pentagon audit and White House concerns were first reported by The Washington Post.
Disinformation researchers said the campaigns largely fell into two camps. Most of the campaigns spread pro-American messages, including memes and slogans that praised the United States. Those programs were similar to how Beijing often spreads disinformation by seeding positive messages about life in China.
One campaign targeting Iran, however, spread divisive messages about life there. The accounts involved pushed out views that both supported and opposed the Iranian government. That disinformation effort resembled the methods used by Russia to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
For years U.S. military commands have promoted pro-American news and messages for audiences overseas, sometimes earning the scrutiny of Congress. But the decision by the social media companies to shut down some accounts associated with the military suggested that the activity had gone further.
Twitter and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, removed accounts that they said violated their terms of service by taking part in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”
A report in August by Stanford University’s Internet Observatory and the social media analytics firm Graphika said those accounts were pushing pro-American messages in the Middle East and Central Asia. The two groups attributed some of the accounts taken down by Facebook and Twitter to the Trans-Regional Web Initiative, a more than 10-year-old Pentagon initiative that sends out information in support of the United States in areas where the U.S. military operates.
The postings varied widely in sophistication. Some of the more polished work was aimed at Twitter and Telegram users in Iran and pushed a wide variety of views. While most of the messages were critical of the Iranian government, researchers said others were supportive of it, the kind of activity that could potentially be designed to inflame debate and sow divisions in the country.
No Cold War
ReplyDelete@NoColdWar
Former US President Jimmy Carter turns 98 today. His thoughts on US-China relations may surprise you:
"Since we normalized relations with China in 1979, the US has been in constant war. China has not been in combat with anyone."
"[The US] is the most warlike country on earth."
https://twitter.com/NoColdWar/status/1576317498693414912?s=20&t=aN53JXYT6G-wrMQYu9pn2Q
Steve Hanke
ReplyDelete@steve_hanke
Prof Jeffrey Sachs said, "The most dangerous country in the world since 1950 has been the United States". The Athens Democracy Forum’s moderator immediately tried to silence Sachs. So much for FREE SPEECH at the Athens Democracy Forum.
https://twitter.com/steve_hanke/status/1584546679759327232?s=20&t=MmJf3m9JsP_y5s3xqe-rRg
Jeffrey Sachs, a professor of sustainable development at Columbia University, said he’s “pretty convinced” the virus came out of a “U.S. lab biotechnology,” although he added that “we don’t know for sure.”
ReplyDeletehttps://www.politico.eu/article/josep-borrell-jeffrey-sachs-adviser-china-disinformation-us-covid-origin/
The latest effort by Sachs — a long-time advocate of dismantling American hegemony and embracing the rise of China — to put blame on U.S. labs has been circulated on Chinese social media, including by the Chinese embassy to France this week.
Sachs is engaged by the European Commission as a special adviser to foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to focus on “cooperation policy.”
Chinese diplomats have repeatedly accused the U.S. of developing biotechnology that transformed into the coronavirus, a claim rejected by the EU as disinformation. The World Health Organization chief last year complained that China was not transparent enough, saying there was a "premature push" to rule out the theory that the virus might have escaped from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan.
A spokesman for the EU’s foreign policy arm sought to draw distance from Sachs.
“Jeffrey Sachs is an external unpaid adviser of the HRVP [Borrell] … The external advisers are external, independent personalities. They are not EU officials. They therefore do not speak for the HRVP, nor for the Commission. Their views are their own,” the spokesman said, stressing that Sachs’ commitment was only for 20 working hours per year.
Contradicting Sachs’ latest speculation about the coronavirus’ origin, the EU spokesman said that “a laboratory accident has been categorized as extremely unlikely” according to a WHO study.
Sachs told POLITICO the virus "quite likely emerged from a U.S.-backed laboratory research program ... A natural spillover is also possible, of course. Both hypotheses are viable at this stage."
Watch Professor Jeffrey Sachs describe the US as “the most violent country in the world” and then get shockingly shut down at the Athens Democracy Forum.
ReplyDeletehttps://johnmenadue.com/extraordinary-intervention-by-jeffrey-sachs-at-the-athens-democracy-forum/
Sach’s argues that what matters is a country’s unique governance culture: classifying countries in political systems (“liberal democracy or not”) is oversimplifying.
He doesn’t hold back when describing the US governance culture: “A semi-democratic white-dominated hierarchical racist society that aims to preserve privilege by the elites [and founded as] a slave-owning genocidal country”. Ouch!
That’s why he argues that “the biggest mistake of president Biden was to say ‘the greatest struggle of the world is between democracies and autocracies’.”
He adds: “The real struggle of the world is to live together and overcome our common crises” under thunderous applause.
He says “the solution in [this world] is to speak with each other more […] Our political elites in the US do not speak with Chinese political elites except to point fingers or to yell at them. […] If we would seat down to speak with each other, we’d actually get somewhere.”
Last but not least, he destroys the myth that “democracies” are more peaceful: “the most violent country in the world in the 19th century was the most democratic, Britain. The most violent country in the world since 1950 is the US”.
And he gets shockingly shut down by the host.
Here is the full video from the Athens Democracy Forum. (Use the toggle on the red line to skip to Jeffrey Sachs, who starts at 15 minutes).
Columbia Economics Professor Jeffrey Sachs: “You Can Be Democratic at Home and Ruthlessly Imperial Abroad.” - YouTube
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPvDrcwmmOU
Sachs said, "The most violent country in the world in the 19th century was the most democratic, or perhaps the 2nd most democratic, was Britain. You can be democratic at home and ruthlessly imperial abroad. The most violent country since 1950 has been the the United States. It's been by far involved in more wars...". That's where he was interrupted by the moderator who said, "Stop. I'm your moderator and it's enough".
Jeffrey Sachs: “Dangerous” U.S. Policy & “West’s False Narrative” Stoking Tensions with Russia, China
ReplyDeletehttps://www.democracynow.org/2022/8/30/wests_false_narrative_china_russia_ukrain
We discuss Western hegemony and U.S. policy in Russia, Ukraine and China with Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, whose new article is headlined “The West’s False Narrative About Russia and China.” Sachs says the bipartisan U.S. approach to foreign policy is “unaccountably dangerous and wrongheaded,” and warns the U.S. is creating “a recipe for yet another war” in East Asia.
https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/h29g9k7l7fymxp39yhzwxc5f72ancr
AMY GOODMAN: What is the story that people in the West and around the world should understand about what’s happening right now with these conflicts, with Russia, with Russia and Ukraine, and with China?
JEFFREY SACHS: The main point, Amy, is that we are not using diplomacy; we are using weaponry. This sale now announced to Taiwan that you’ve been discussing this morning is just another case in point. This does not make Taiwan safer. This does not make the world safer. It certainly doesn’t make the United States safer.
This goes back a long way. I think it’s useful to start 30 years ago. The Soviet Union ended, and some American leaders got it into their head that there was now what they called the unipolar world, that the U.S. was the sole superpower, and we could run the show. The results have been disastrous. We have had now three decades of militarization of American foreign policy. A new database that Tufts is maintaining has just shown that there have been more than 100 military interventions by the United States since 1991. It’s really unbelievable.
And I have seen, in my own experience over the last 30 years working extensively in Russia, in Central Europe, in China and in other parts of the world, how the U.S. approach is a military-first, and often a military-only, approach. We arm who we want. We call for NATO enlargement, no matter what other countries say may be harmful to their security interests. We brush aside anyone else’s security interests. And when they complain, we ship more armaments to our allies in that region. We go to war when we want, where we want, whether it was Afghanistan or Iraq or the covert war against Assad in Syria, which is even today not properly understood by the American people, or the war in Libya. And we say, “We’re peace-loving. What’s wrong with Russia and China? They are so warlike. They’re out to undermine the world.” And we end up in terrible confrontations.
The war in Ukraine — just to finish the introductory view — could have been avoided and should have been avoided through diplomacy. What President Putin of Russia was saying for years was “Do not expand NATO into the Black Sea, not to Ukraine, much less to Georgia,” which if people look on the map, straight across to the eastern edge of the Black Sea. Russia said, “This will surround us. This will jeopardize our security. Let us have diplomacy.” The United States rejected all diplomacy. I tried to contact the White House at the end of 2021 — in fact, I did contact the White House and said there will be war unless the U.S. enters diplomatic talks with President Putin over this question of NATO enlargement. I was told the U.S. will never do that. That is off the table. And it was off the table. Now we have a war that’s extraordinarily dangerous.
And we are taking exactly the same tactics in East Asia that led to the war in Ukraine. We’re organizing alliances, building up weaponry, trash-talking China, having Speaker Pelosi fly to Taiwan, when the Chinese government said, “Please, lower the temperature, lower the tensions.” We say, “No, we do what we want,” and now send more arms. This is a recipe for yet another war. And to my mind, it’s terrifying.
U.S. Foreign Policy Veteran Says Real Danger Is Here in America - The New York Times
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/us/politics/richard-haass-biden-trump-foreign-policy.html
Everywhere he has gone as president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard N. Haass has been asked the same question: What keeps him up at night? He has had no shortage of options over the years — Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, climate change, international terrorism, food insecurity, the global pandemic.
But as he steps down after two decades running America’s most storied private organization focused on international affairs, Mr. Haass has come to a disturbing conclusion. The most serious danger to the security of the world right now? The threat that costs him sleep? The United States itself.
“It’s us,” he said ruefully the other day.
That was never a thought this global strategist would have entertained until recently. But in his mind, the unraveling of the American political system means that for the first time in his life the internal threat has surpassed the external threat. Instead of being the most reliable anchor in a volatile world, Mr. Haass said, the United States has become the most profound source of instability and an uncertain exemplar of democracy.
S.L. Kanthan
ReplyDelete@Kanthan2030
How many Americans know how propaganda works?
How many have heard of Edward Bernays? Maybe 1%.
He is the father of mass propaganda. And his techniques are still copied.
For example: This is how he increased sales of cigarettes — by inducing women to smoke and thus doubling potential customers.
And he did by using three strategies:
🔹reframing smoking as a “women’s liberation” thing.
🔹Recruiting celebrities
🔹Paying off media to glorify his stunt.
Thus, he held a women’s march for freedom and had the front-row women smoke cigarettes.
Then, he had the NY Times print it (in 1929) as a big news on the first page: “Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of “Freedom.”
By 1930, advertisements with beautiful women smoking were everywhere! Lucky brand was a good example.
The same playbook has been used over and over for decades for everything from consumer products and wars to vaccines and LGBTQ.
Edward Bernays influenced every aspect of US — from corporate marketing to military industrial complex.
But you just have to figure out the basics, and then you will see the trick everywhere.
https://twitter.com/Kanthan2030/status/1676659334431014912?s=20
-----------
The manipulation of the American mind: Edward Bernays and the birth of public relations
https://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american-mind-edward-bernays-and-the-birth-of-public-relations-44393
“The most interesting man in the world.” “Reach out and touch someone.” “Finger-lickin’ good.” Such advertising slogans have become fixtures of American culture, and each year millions now tune into the Super Bowl as much for the ads as for the football.
While no single person can claim exclusive credit for the ascendancy of advertising in American life, no one deserves credit more than a man most of us have never heard of: Edward Bernays.
I first encountered Bernays through an article I was writing on propaganda, and it quickly became clear that he was one of the 20th century’s foremost salesmen of ideas. The fact that 20 years have elapsed since his death provides a fitting opportunity to reexamine his legacy.
Bernays pioneered public relations
Often referred to as “the father of public relations,” Bernays in 1928 published his seminal work, Propaganda, in which he argued that public relations is not a gimmick but a necessity:
How The Conversation is different: We explain without oversimplifying.
Learn more
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” Samuel P. Huntington
ReplyDelete-------------------
Ah, so you want India to become a superpower – like America?
by Roger Marshall
Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/ah-so-you-want-india-to-become-a-superpower-like-america-3018901
In the agricultural sector, most US farms would be out of business but for cheap migrant labour from Central America, mainly Mexico -- the same Mexico whose lands were expropriated but whose people are still being shut out at the border.
———-
There are many Indians, politicians and ordinary citizens alike, who would like to see India become a superpower, much along the lines of the United States. Is this in keeping with the ethos of the Indian character? And to what end? To answer these questions, we need to understand what it is in the American character that enabled the US to grow from a 300,000 square-mile territory comprised of 13 original colonies bordering the Atlantic Ocean to a gigantic country covering some 3.5 million square-miles, extending out to the Pacific Ocean.
Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/ah-so-you-want-india-to-become-a-superpower-like-america-3018901
Though the phrase ‘manifest destiny’ was coined in 1845 by Democrat John O’Sullivan, the ideology behind the phrase was operative even back in the 1620s, when the first European settlers, the Puritans from England fleeing religious persecution, set foot in North America. Manifest destiny refers to the divine right to “tame and cultivate” the new country by displacing the “uncivilised,” non-Christian peoples who did not take full advantage of the land God had granted them..
This ideology served to justify the violent displacement of native peoples and military takeover of their lands. When the US purchased the territory of Louisiana (over 800,000 square-miles) from France in 1803, it essentially bought Native American tribal land which France neither owned nor controlled, if only to prevent Spain, Britain and Russia from colonising the area. This area is what is now known as Middle America, populated almost entirely by the ancestors of white immigrants from northern Europe
That race has been a huge factor in America’s attainment of superpower status can be seen by examining legislation pertaining to immigration and trade over the last 200 years. While unrestricted immigration from Western Europe has always been allowed, it has been less so for Southern and Eastern Europeans but definitely not for Asians, unless they were slaves and indentured labourers. Even though it was cheap Chinese labour that built the American railroads in the 1870s, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 drove most of the Chinese out of America. American labour unions believed that Chinese coolies were responsible for declining wages and lowered standards of living.
Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/ah-so-you-want-india-to-become-a-superpower-like-america-3018901
—————
Absent a moral or ethical compass, we suppose that any nation singularly focused on enriching itself can become a superpower. To quote John O’Sullivan, “Yes, more, more, more! . . . till our national destiny is fulfilled and. . the whole boundless continent is ours”.
Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/ah-so-you-want-india-to-become-a-superpower-like-america-3018901
WikiLeaks
ReplyDelete@wikileaks
"I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s – it was like – we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.” Fmr CIA Director + Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
https://inteltoday.org/2021/04/15/two-years-ago-mike-pompeo-i-was-the-cia-director-we-lied-we-cheated-we-stole-april-15-2019/
https://x.com/wikileaks/status/1799005189648875625
-----------
WikiLeaks
@wikileaks
Julian Assange's full testimony to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg today:
We revealed the CIA's vast production of malware and viruses, its subversion of supply chains, its subversion of antivirus software, cars, smart TVs and iPhones.
CIA Director Pompeo launched a campaign of retribution.
It is now a matter of public record that under Pompeo's explicit direction, the CIA drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me within the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and authorized going after my European colleagues, subjecting us to theft, hacking attacks, and the planting of false information.
My wife and my infant son were also targeted. A CIA asset was permanently assigned to track my wife and instructions were given to obtain DNA from my six month old son's nappy.
This is the testimony of more than 30 current and former US intelligence officials speaking to the US press, which has been additionally corroborated by records seized in a prosecution brought against some of the CIA agents involved.
The CIA's targeting of myself, my family and my associates through aggressive extrajudicial and extraterritorial means provides a rare insight into how powerful intelligence organisations engage in transnational repression. Such repressions are not unique. What is unique is that we know so much about this one due to numerous whistleblowers and to judicial investigations in Spain.
Transnational repression cannot become the norm here.
-----
Watch the entire hearing here (includes introductions and following Q&A session) 👉
https://youtube.com/live/Mq85IZMeigc?t=745s
https://x.com/wikileaks/status/1841064879819555221