President
Barack Obama addressed the nation from the White House on Wednesday,
saying the U.S. is leading a broad effort with allies to defeat the
terrorist group ISIS that could include airstrikes in Syria, and an
expanded air campaign and troop deployment in Iraq. (Saul
Loeb/Associated Press)
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Consortium News
Exclusive:
“Strategic communications” or Stratcom, a propaganda/psy-op technique
that treats information as a “soft power” weapon to wield against
adversaries, is a new catch phrase in an Official Washington obsessed
with the clout that comes from spinning false narratives, reports Robert
Parry.
By Robert Parry
In this age of pervasive media, the primary method of social control is through the creation of narratives delivered to the public through newspapers, TV, radio, computers, cell phones and any other gadget that can convey information. This reality has given rise to an obsession among the power elite to control as much of this messaging as possible.
So, regarding U.S. relations toward the world, we see the State Department, the White House, Pentagon, NATO and other agencies pushing various narratives to sell the American people and other populations on how they should view U.S. policies, rivals and allies. The current hot phrase for this practice is “strategic communications” or Stratcom, which blends psychological operations, propaganda and P.R. into one mind-bending smoothie.
I have been following this process since the early 1980s when the Reagan administration sought to override “the Vietnam Syndrome,” a public aversion to foreign military interventions that followed the Vietnam War. To get Americans to “kick” this syndrome, Reagan’s team developed “themes” about overseas events that would push American “hot buttons.”
Tapping into the Central Intelligence Agency’s experience in psy-ops targeted at foreign audiences, President Ronald Reagan and CIA Director William J. Casey assembled a skilled team inside the White House led by CIA propaganda specialist Walter Raymond Jr.
By Robert Parry
In this age of pervasive media, the primary method of social control is through the creation of narratives delivered to the public through newspapers, TV, radio, computers, cell phones and any other gadget that can convey information. This reality has given rise to an obsession among the power elite to control as much of this messaging as possible.
So, regarding U.S. relations toward the world, we see the State Department, the White House, Pentagon, NATO and other agencies pushing various narratives to sell the American people and other populations on how they should view U.S. policies, rivals and allies. The current hot phrase for this practice is “strategic communications” or Stratcom, which blends psychological operations, propaganda and P.R. into one mind-bending smoothie.
I have been following this process since the early 1980s when the Reagan administration sought to override “the Vietnam Syndrome,” a public aversion to foreign military interventions that followed the Vietnam War. To get Americans to “kick” this syndrome, Reagan’s team developed “themes” about overseas events that would push American “hot buttons.”
Tapping into the Central Intelligence Agency’s experience in psy-ops targeted at foreign audiences, President Ronald Reagan and CIA Director William J. Casey assembled a skilled team inside the White House led by CIA propaganda specialist Walter Raymond Jr.
Read More Here
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Read More and Watch Video Here : Obama prepared to order airstrikes in Syria against ISIL
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Oratory as a Weapon of Mass Deception
I used to say President Obama is a great orator.
In retrospect, particularly in view of his speeches over the past two years, I would have to modify my appraisal: Mr. Obama is a mind-numbingly effective orator — with major emphasis on ‘mind-numbing’ — whose powers of persuasion are both awe-inspiring and reality-altering.
But great? I think not.
You see, great orators don’t insult their audiences by lying and using their enormous gifts to wreak havoc on the world, demean other world leaders, and generally inflict listeners with self-serving propaganda.
Great orators ennoble, enlighten, inspire!
There is so much deception, obfuscation, manipulative innuendo, faulty logic, sheer raw hypocrisy in his recent U.N. speech, I could write volumes. But it’s not worth your time or mine, since so many of the lies upon which he built this petty and self-aggrandizing show have been repeated with such relentless regularity, they are part of the accepted collective wisdom of both the American public and the government propaganda apparatus, aka the main stream media.
