Propaganda In Our Day: Even Its Opposite Is Untrue

Drug Enforcement Agency personnel or terriorists operating in Honduras? You be the judge.
Photo: Rodrigo Abd/AP via The Intercept

It's spring in the 8th grade and we turn to the study of propaganda. The student who considers it his duty to challenge everything I do demanded to know why studying propaganda belongs in English class. I turned his question back to his classmates and the wary silence accompanied by bored inattention was broken by a lone raised hand. "Weasel words is about using words that don't mean what they seem to, and words are what we study in English." Good job. 

Of course we live in an age dominated by images that amplify words or often sidestep words altogether to convey ideas. And a veritable deluge of false narratives like Russiagate conveyed by any means. It makes for an interesting perspective for this old teacher reflecting that there is hardly anything new under the sun.

(This reminds me to show them the Assyrian relief on display at my alma mater with cuneiform exalting King Ashurnasirpal as he's blessed with the gift of fertilizing -- there's tree pollen in the winged spirit's handbag.)

Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine

We've considered lots of advertisements, for that is the very air a child in the waning days of capitalism breaths from birth. I've also shown a clip from the 1947 U.S. Department of War film "Don't Be A Sucker" pointing out graphically the parallel between a demagogue's claims in Nazi Germany and a demagogue's claims in post-WWII America. Scapegoating, preying on people's fears, and exploiting the unemployed are clumsily demonstrated as a man in the Cold War crowd nervously turns the masonic ring on his finger muttering, "Hey, now they're talking about me." Any resemblance to current events is purely coincidental.

But the real fun began when I asked students to find a short video of any kind that exemplifies at least two of the propaganda strategies we've been focusing on: weasel words, glittering generalities, bandwagon and expert (in 2017 read: celebrity) opinion.

One student turned up an infographic-style video that animates a book on propaganda by evil mastermind Edward Bernays. I wasn't planning to study the history of propaganda but students now saw how it was used on behalf of the corporation United Fruit to effect regime change in Guatemala, and who invented the weasel words "public relations."



I knew this history already so it didn't stick in my craw quite as much as the next offering, a video titled "Propaganda video claims to show ISIS's 'workout program'." 

Screenshot from Daily Mail video

All the men are masked like DEA agents in Honduras, and some appear rather chunky. No voices are heard under the soundtrack of an Arabic (or Dari?) song presumably calling on idealistic notions of faith in the service of killing infidels.

Without an understanding of the words, the appeal of the images was strong for teenagers -- leaping through rings of fire, tumbling through obstacle courses and demonstrating proper knife fighting techniques. "They make it look so fun," one observed.

I will not be sharing this infographic with my students.

It would take an entire course on contemporary U.S. foreign policy to unravel the complicated lies about Islamic terrorism that conceal our lust for wealth and territorial ambitions. The documentary Reel Bad Arabs showed a plethora of Hollywood's efforts to demonize those sitting on top of what U.S. oil companies consider their rightful property. But in a week when corporate news was full of images of the president and Saudi Arabia's leaders dancing together with swords as they sold and bought $110 billion in weapons -- and a suicide bomber allegedly motivated by religion blew up scores of young girls at a concert in Manchester -- the layers of deception are too dense for my 8th grade English class.

As for the "fun" of combat, what empire has not employed propaganda to sell that notion?

When thinking about propaganda I often return to an essay by George Orwell published in 1939 about boys' "penny dreadfuls" sold in England's poorest neighborhoods. An interesting quote:

The American ideal, the ‘he-man’, the ‘tough guy’, the gorilla who puts everything right by socking everybody on the jaw, now figures in probably a majority of boys' papers.

Orwell concerns himself with framing, arguably the most powerful propaganda technique of all. (A question I posed about the "Don't Be A Sucker" film was: Where are all the women?) By directing our gaze to a narrow window on the world, other possibilities are negated. A constricted view offering compelling, false narrative meets the litmus test of truly sophisticated propaganda in that even its opposite is untrue.

I'm not going to push my own political analysis on 8th graders. That would be wrong, and not what I agreed to do when I signed my contract. I am going to try and plant a seed of doubt in their minds about their access to real information. Net neutrality is under fire (again), and we live in the sticks -- so online searching may or may not continue to be a uniquely powerful way for my students to find real news. At least I hope they leave for summer vacation realizing it's their own responsibility to find some.

I'll let a teenage girl have the last word here: @angryhijabi's passionate appeal for an unbiased and unhurried examination of actual facts.

Bombing An Afghan Watershed For Glory And Profit #PentagonClimateCrime

When on April 13 the Pentagon dropped a bomb with a one mile blast radius, allegedly killing zero civilians and 94 ISIS militants holed up in tunnels, here are some of the consequences:

The watershed of Kabul is heavily polluted, and the flow of ancient irrigation systems in an arid region is disrupted.

Trees growing within a 500 foot radius are flattened in the agricultural Achin district of Nangarhar province.

The Pentagon's already massive carbon footprint increases.

The U.S. taxpayer is out $314,000,000 the same week that federal income taxes are due.

The bomb dropped today in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan, cost $314,000,000. https://t.co/mV6sJoMIFJ (credit @thenib) pic.twitter.com/aj0Om5RhAV

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 13, 2017

War profiteer Dynetics gets a major brand boost.

The U.S. continues a pattern of funding its own enemies in the endless "war on terror" by bombing a tunnel complex the CIA helped bin Laden build for the mujahadeen. 

The demagogue with bad hair keeps one of his many campaign promises: "We're gonna bomb the shit out of ISIS."

The U.S. sends a message to governments everywhere e.g., this morning's Reuters headline "Pence warns North Korea of U.S. resolve shown in Syria, Afghan strikes" reporting on the vice president's trip to South Korea to further deployment of THAAD missile "defense" system there.

Image: Hassan Bleibel

The demagogue states on camera, "We are so proud of our military...We have the greatest military in the world!" but fudges when asked if he authorized use of the MOAB.

Corporate media talking heads nearly wet themselves expressing enthusiasm for a man they claim becomes more "presidential" when he orders (or maybe just observes?) airstrikes on other countries.

Alternative media examine the facts, alleged facts, and possible motivators for the airstrike more thoroughly.



North Korea responds by holding a missile parade, and the corporate press claim we are on the verge of going to war with that nuclear armed nation.

The neocons who had Syria on their maps when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 finally get to use a weapon developed for that conflict. 

U.S. military commander in Afghanistan General Nicholson finds the courage to visit Kabul two days later, possibly for talks about bringing in more troops than the 8,000 already there in order to "break the stalemate" of that 14 year conflict.

Antiwar organizer David Swanson observes the parallels with United Airlines' attack on a passenger, noting that if other passengers had simply blocked the aisle it would have halted the violent removal of David Dao. He then adds:

one should expect corporations and their thugs to behave barbarically. They are designed to do so. One should expect corrupt governments that lack popular influence or control to abuse power. 

The question is whether people will sit back and take it, resist with some nonviolent skills, or disastrously resort to violence themselves.

Amen to that, brother.

Banner from website of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers

Why Discuss #ClimateChange With No Mention Of #PentagonClimateCrime? Follow The $$$$$

Source: The Guardian "Hundreds of civilians killed in US-led air strikes on Isis targets" by Alice Ross 
 A US-led air strike in October in Kobani, Syria, during fighting between Syrian Kurds and Islamic State.
Photograph: Gokhan Sahin/Getty Image

When counting up the immense carbon footprint of the Pentagon, we would do well to remember its many wealthy contractors. You know, the corporations that make weapons and sell them at great profit to combat the enemy du jour.



Their profit motive, and the corporate control of information media in the U.S., ensure that the Pentagon is conspicuously absent from any discussion of what's causing climate change.

Even without counting the CO2 spew of its contractors, the Pentagon's role is immense. From World Beyond War:
MILITARY AIRCRAFT CONSUME 
ABOUT ONE QUARTER OF
THE WORLD’S JET FUEL
Remember President Obama's big speech about the carbon footprint of commercial jet travel? Well, he wasn't talking about the Pentagon's use of jet fuel. Remember that the Democratic Party gets plenty of campaign contributions from war profiteers. 

THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
USES MORE FUEL PER DAY
THAN THE COUNTRY OF SWEDEN

Let's see, what does the DOD accomplish in a day vs. the country of Sweden?

Graphic: Anthony Freda. Used with permission.

The Pentagon terrorizes children by bombing their homes, schools, and hospitals. So far more than 100 children are believed to have been killed by air strikes aimed at ISIS/ISIL in Iraq and Syria. 

Sweden educates them.

Higher education in Sweden is financed largely by tax revenue. Earlier, this applied to all students regardless of nationality. However, in the autumn of 2011 tuition fees were introduced for students from outside the EU/EEA area...To enable students who cannot pay tuition fees to study in Sweden, the Government has allocated resources for two scholarship programmes.

Maybe one of the international students so-educated will discover how to quantify the Pentagon's carbon footprint. The number may be top secret, but that doesn't stop it from fueling the climate change we're all living with.

An Open Letter To My Union, MEA/NEA: Stop Backing The War Party

Students in Newark walked out of class calling for support for public vs. privatized education for its citizens, and a return to local control of how education funds are spent. Source: PopularResistance.org 

I kind of needed irony guard yesterday morning while reading the Maine Education Association (MEA) newsletter in my email.

AT LEAST 5  KIDS IN YOUR CLASS ARE PROBABLY HUNGRY On Tuesday the Legislature held its third public meeting for the Task Force on Student Hunger in Bangor. Representatives from a variety of stakeholders spoke on the importance of providing our students with adequate meals so that all students have the chance to optimize their learning.  
One in 4 (25%) of Maine's students experience food insecurity, with over 45% of our kids qualifying for free or reduced lunch.  According to the Good Shepherd Food Bank some ways to identify hungry students are:

• food hoarding  

• anxiety about when meals will be served  

• rushing to get to the cafeteria and/or being one of the first in line for school meals  

• complaints of headaches, stomachaches, or falling asleep 

Your school may qualify for the Backpack Program through Good Shepherd, a program that provides food for families and students.  You can learn more here (large PDF file please allow time for it to download). 

HELPING KIDS COPE Recently there have been many stories in the news that are upsetting, even to adults.  These are particularly difficult for children.  We need to be letting kids know that our schools will protect them and are safe havens.  The American Psychological Association has put together some resources at their website.
Resources:

• How Much News Coverage is OK for Children?

• Resilience Guide for Parents & Teachers

And here is the feedback I sent the MEA, my union as an educator in Maine, and an affiliate of the National Education Association (NEA):

Regarding the high incidence of child poverty in Maine, and the many disturbing stories in the news that teachers need to support students in handling...

One of the reasons so many news stories are upsetting is that the Democratic Party, which the MEA/NEA unfailingly supports, is a war party. More than 50% of the discretionary federal budget each year under Democratic leadership has gone to the Pentagon and its contractors. Now President Obama has announced he will (continue) bombing Iraq and Syria, ostensibly to fight ISIS which the U.S. and the Saudis helped create, fund and arm. Then there is Ukraine, where the Obama administration is backing the neo-Nazis.

If the MEA/NEA cares about the well being of students as much as it says it does, it must stop supporting the war party. Any war party.

For years I implored the MEA to get involved in Maine's Bring Our War $$ Home campaign, waged to bring pressure on Congress to redirect military spending to needs at home. They never even dignified my requests with a reply must less joined us. Because they are beholden to the Democrats, who have not just stood by but actually helped gut the social program that made the U.S. prosperous and literate once upon a time. Like free, quality public education.

Hats off to students in Newark, N.J. this week who blocked traffic to protest the privatization of education in their high poverty city.  State control of the schools there has hastened a charter school takeover.

“We are building a movement to take back democratic local control of our schools,” Kristin Towkaniuk, president of the Newark Students Union to Eye Witness News. “Our action…will be an escalation demonstrating the community’s unrest over Chris Christie’s efforts to privatize our public schools.” 

You can read more about students' impressive organizing and resistance here. Follow events on twitter:#OurNewark.

School Begins With Talk of ISIS And The #FergusonSyllabus

The regular crew was on the bridge Sunday at noon in Skowhegan, Maine and we had several visitors. This Navy man, who crews on a nuclear submarine, stopped to talk for quite a while about his perceptions of whether the use of depleted uranium is a war crime (he didn't think so) and the toxic chemicals that do permeate every military base he's been on. Also the work of the Navy pursuing "narco-terrorists" outside Columbia, drug lords who employ one-use fiberglass submarines to ship drugs around.

It was a respectful dialogue, and that is one of the things I love about my bridge community.

My friend Fang's sign can only be partially seen here but says in full:
NOBAMA
DEPLETED URANIUM
IS A
WAR CRIME

By carrying this sign, he is creating a space for the discussion to happen. For a long time he had a sign that said D.U. = WAR CRIME but most of his audience didn't know what D.U. stood for and probably just read it as Duh. So maybe stupidity = war crime?

Which bring us to ISIS. Click through to Vimeo to watch this video on the confusing situation where the US first arms militants like ISIS and then subsequently bombs them. Or, if you prefer text to video, you might want to read Edward Snowden's latest revelation, documents showing that Israel's spy agency Mossad trained ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, aided by the CIA and Britain's M-16.


Pentagon Hymn, the shores of Tripoli from MarkFiore on Vimeo.

Our ten year old grandson told us that he loves his new teacher, that she is young, that she told them about ISIS and what bad guys they are, and that she mentioned that in 5th grade they would be studying the Bill of Rights. Then she mentioned that people standing on the bridge every week in a nearby town is an example of the First Amendment. Our grandson raised his hand and told her some of those people were his grandparents.

I worry when I hear that kids are going back to school learning about ISIS, but not Ferguson. (Maybe she'll cover that, too, who knows?) I've seen news reports that some school administrators are telling their teachers "change the subject" if Ferguson comes up. I'm sure many educators will ignore that particular directive.

Others have put forth a hash tag #FergusonSyllabus to help organize material to teach about racism in the USA, police brutality, and let us hope some lively debate on whether racist policing is a standalone problem or part of a larger class war in which people of color are far more likely to be low income than white people are. And how white racism sows confusion.

The more confusing, the better for our corporate masters. How do you explain ISIS to 5th graders -- and still keep your job? Maybe Irony Guard would help.


Today is Labor Day when educators everywhere rest an extra day and write lesson plans. Will they be teaching that organizers called for people to stop driving at 4:30pm today and use emergency blinkers for 4 1/2 minutes in solidarity with the demand that Police Officer Darren Wilson be charged and tried for the death of Michael Brown?

Because Ferguson. Everywhere. Now.

Morgan Bradley (left) asks school girls what they plan to be when they grow up as protesters demonstrated against the police shooting of Michael Brown at the Ferguson police station on Saturday, Aug. 30, 2014. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com

From Popular Resistance "Over 1,000 Protest In Ferguson, Call For Highway Shutdown Monday"

Al-Maliki Regime "Out Of Hellfires" So Uncle Sam To The Rescue?

Nancy Lopez Mancias of CODEPINK San Francisco speaking at a march on Saturday, June 21, 2014

Sometimes the rhetoric of my government parroted by the corporate press is both terrifying and idiotic in the same breath.

Here's the ABC "News" headline running at the top of Google's "news" feed on Saturday:

Most of my fellow citizens in the heart of the empire read such nonsense without much analysis. They have been told enough times that ISIS = bad terrorists and they are largely unaware that elements in the U.S. government were eager to support ISIS in Syria where they were trying to topple Assad's regime.

Now that ISIS is trying to topple the U.S. backed Al-Maliki regime in Iraq, they are not our guys. The fact that they are only one small -- albeit well-funded and heavily armed -- faction of the popular resistance in Iraq is ignored. So is the fact that by backing Al-Maliki the U.S. is essentially siding with Iran. 'Cause they're supposed to be super bad guys too, remember? Luckily for the warmongers almost no one in the U.S. does remember or ever knew in the first place that by invading Iraq in 2003 we set the stage for Iran to achieve major influence in the Iraqi government that replaced Saddam Hussein.

Widespread ignorance and confusion result when people look for analysis to t.v. shows full of the same talking heads who lied the U.S. into attacking Iraq in 2003. 

2003, Washington DC: Desiree Fairooz confronting Condoleeza Rice, then Secretary of State who was urgin the U.S. to invade Iraq in order to topple Saddam Hussein's regime.

Some of them made a fortune on the Hellfire missile and other munitions used to destroy Iraq's infrastructure, people and towns. Others make a ton of money for pontificating on foreign policy. They appear quite eager to tell the tales that will sell more weapons to either the U.S. or Iraq or both.

As a counterpoint to what war criminals like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice have to say to the citizenry, I recommend this article by Iraqi American Dr. Dahlia Wafsi offering a concise overview dating back to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. According to Codepink intern Ben who sent around the link:

[Dr. Wafsi] explains how it is the US responsible for sectarianism in Iraq and discusses the evidence that the US funded sectarian death squads in the country, likening Iraq in the 21st century to the '80s Salvador Option (Wikileaks document show this to be the case).  

Most important, she discusses how ISIS is only one small actor in the country; the Islamophobic, orientalist U.S. media has ignored that there is a much larger revolutionary presence, one that opposes ISIS (and calls them "barbarians"): the General Military Council of Iraqi Revolutionaries.

This interview of journalist Dahr Jamail who recently traveled in Iraq and spoke to people there is also worth a read or a listen (it's available as a podcast). Jamail reports:

since late 2012, Sunnis in Anbar province and other parts of Iraq had been protesting every Friday right after Friday prayers because of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki—who the US has backed since his installation many years ago and has sold him now over $25 billion of arms and training and counting—But Sunnis were protesting against him because he was sending the military into Sunni towns, Sunni enclaves and killing people, detaining people and then, once they were detained, torturing them. There was all kinds of rampant reports of detaining women, them being raped while they were in prison. 

And definitely don't miss this bracing interview with scholar and veteran Andrew Bacevich.

Bill Moyers often doesn't ask the right questions, but Bacevich supplies the right answers with all the passion of a voice crying in the wilderness of a nation waging war as if it were a "frivolous" pursuit. (Or just a friendly neighbor helping out a brother who has run out of Hellfires.)

I participated in a couple of informational conference calls last week including a Codepink-organized call with three speakers who offered informed insight. 

Farah Al Mousawi, an Iraqi American, said that it’s a revolution, that Iraqis have been protesting around the country. An opposition movement with clear demands has been building for over a year,  and the Al-Maliki government has been unsuccessful in repressing protests in Anbar protests, including in Fallujah. Al-Maliki accuses revolutionaries of being “extremists" and has marginalized several minorities, arbitrarily imprisoning many. (Note that an Egyptian blogger with contacts in Iraq cited the targeting of women by the Al-Maliki regime, imprisoning and raping them while in prison, as the catalyst for Iraqi non-violent mass resistance starting in February 2012.)

Matt Howard of Iraq Veterans against the war reported that recently 30,000 Iraqi troops put down their weapons in Mosul and observed of U.S. threats,  “You can’t bomb a military into picking weapons back up.” Al-Maliki tactics to put down the Fallujah resistance six months ago included bombing the hospital among other humanitarian targets. His view is that the most appropriate role for the U.S. at this point would be the clean up of toxins such as depleted uranium still festering following the U.S. attacks on Iraq and subsequent occupation.

Inder Comar, the attorney for Iraqi mother Sundus Shaker Saleh who is suing officials of the Bush administration for war crimes, offered his perspective that the unstable situation in Iraq is the result of when a country ignores the rule of law. He noted that we are witnessing a further breakdown of a country after the U.S. used premeditated force with no plan for what to do after invasion. After 11 years of war, what’s left is chaos because this is what war does to society: destroys institutions and culture. He went on to say, "The way to stop this is to have accountability and some kind of justice for what happened in Iraq. The 800-lb gorilla in the room is the initial, illegal invasion by the U.S."

On a call earlier in the week I heard Phyllis Bennis of IPS observe that ISIS was strengthened by fighting in Syria and is terrifically well-funded, mostly by Saudi backers, but constitutes only a tiny percentage of people in Iraq actively working to accomplish the fall of Al-Maliki's regime.

Then, on Sunday, out into the street with Mainers against bombing or otherwise intervening militarily in Iraq. Our action was part of a nationwide outcry -- yet again -- against the U.S. attacking Iraq. If you agree with us, you can sign a petition to Obama here.



REVISED June 25: Apparently 50,000 is the correct number of Iraq army troops who laid down their weapons in Mosul, according to "The New Oil Wars In Iraq," an excellent overview of the central role of oil production in the uprisings against the Al-Maliki regime.