The games that the devious play are many and far from a modern phenomenon. The dirty tricks brigade have a long and infamous history where attention is pointed away from their crimes and towards the non-existent or lesser crimes of others. They use the tricks of the sociopath to confuse, divide and denigrate, always with an eye to the main chance in order to further their own interests.
Prior to the Iraq war we saw innumerable attempts to manipulate western audiences into sanctioning ultra-violence by demonizing a chosen enemy and simultaneously instigating fear of ‘the other’.
They say the first victim of war is the truth. But it is more accurate to say that truth dies when one nation wishes to make war against another. The lies begin in the preparation for that war to dissolve any barriers or public relations issues in committing the planned crimes.
Western elites make their plans then seek to create a pathway to realizing them. Their populations are seen stupid beasts who have to be treated as having an ignorant herd mentality. What do these plebs know? We have all the data needed to make a decision. Why should some crazy notion of democracy interrupt our carefully laid plans?
The general public is treated to generalizations rather than genuine information. A case in point is what Tony Blair told Britain as compared to what was in the report compiled on Iraq when Blair’s only purpose was to get Britain to back the USA in the war it lusted after. Every qualifying term such as ‘possibly’, ‘we think’, ‘in our estimation’ and so forth was removed by him and instead he delivered bald statements of asserted fact to the UK parliament.
“Iraq has weapons of mass destruction which can be readied to fire at 45 minutes notice.”
This was the very kind of generalized, fear-mongering statement designed to instill greatest fear in the mind of the British populace that is a classic of its kind. It is a statement of blatant manipulation based on a completely unwarranted assertion. No ‘if’, ‘buts’ or whens’. No possiblies, maybes or any qualifier at all. A bald statement of a lie. And it worked. This was the headline next day as it was calculated to be as Blair and his cohorts worked on his speech. And the supposition in many rather uninformed minds was that this meant the missiles could hit Britain, exclamation mark. Those fully aware of how far away Iraq is knew this was not the case... but no clarification was given of course.
Ultimately Iraq was found to have no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever of course. That over one hundred thousand had died due to a pack of lies and an overriding enthusiasm for going to war created hardly a ripple. An inquiry came and went... with a tiny blip of expressed worry about this and that and was soon forgotten by most and ignored by those who had instigated the war. No one went to jail. No one apologized. Indeed, Tony Blair simply kept saying “We did the right thing.” And they have been doing the “right” thing ever since. Libya was next. Then the proxy war in Syria.
Each leader the West wants to depose gets the same treatment. Demonization. Even when there are pictures of western leaders shaking hands with and/or hugging them them in previous times this doesn’t stop the overnight transformation from divine to demon.
This sort of thing has a long history. When King Richard the Lionheart of England was marching his army across Europe on the crusades he sought to add forces to it as he went along. As he arrived at outposts along the way he or his people would spread a certain story among the people and to the local knights. The tale was told that the Arabs in Jerusalem enjoyed drinking the fresh warm blood of Christian babies of an evening. You can imagine the response of the god-fearing folk, knowing little to nothing about what went on in such far-flung locations and naively believing what they were told. The necessary blood-lust was created which would serve The Lionheart well.
Misdirection is a related subject, sometimes called fake news these days. False stories designed to create an emotional response which will forward the plans of those creating it.
Take the naming of Greenland and Iceland for instance. It has been said that the person naming these two wished to misdirect the attention of would be speculators. He named the greenest island Iceland to dissuade speculators from looking there. Greenland is almost totally covered in ice and that’s where he desired to misdirect their attention.
In the field of geopolitics we find propaganda and the seeding of believable lies.
It has been admitted by Paul Wolfowitz, one of the most active neoconservatives urging multiple regime change wars that this was what was needed to create the influence to initiate a surge of support for the wars they wanted to wage. In their manifesto, ‘The New American Century’ the Neocons stated that what America needed was a new Pearl Harbor’ event to motivate people to desire war. They got 9/11.
When the U.S. needed a good enough reason to greatly escalate involvement in Vietnam the ‘Gulf of Tonkin Incident was used as a convenient excuse:
‘The Gulf of Tonkin incident was presented to the U.S. Congress on August 5, 1964, as two unprovoked attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on the destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy of the U.S. Seventh Fleet and that led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed President Lyndon B. Johnson to greatly escalate U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.’ (Encyclopedia Britannica)
‘In 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded that Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2, but that there were no North Vietnamese naval vessels present during the incident of August 4. The report stated, regarding the first incident on August 2:
‘At 1500G, Captain Herrick ordered Ogier's gun crews to open fire if the boats approached within ten thousand yards (9,150 m). At about 1505G, Maddox fired three rounds to warn off the communist [North Vietnamese] boats. This initial action was never reported by the Johnson administration, which insisted that the Vietnamese boats fired first.’ (Wikipedia)
Regarding Libya the excuse was a non-existent threat to kill 6,000 non-existent rebels fleeing to the city of Benghazi:
'The war against Libya is built on fraud. The United Nations Security Council passed two resolutions against Libya on the basis of unproven claims, specifically that Colonel Muammar Qaddafi was killing his own people in Benghazi. The claim in its exact form was that Qaddafi had ordered Libyan forces to kill 6,000 people in Benghazi. These claims were widely disseminated, but always vaguely explained. It was on the basis of this claim that Libya was referred to the U.N. Security Council at U.N Headquarters in New York City and kicked out of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
False claims about African mercenary armies in Libya and about jet attacks on civilians were also used in a broad media campaign against Libya. These two claims have been sidelined and have become more and more murky. The massacre claims, however, were used in a legal, diplomatic, and military framework to justify NATO’s war on the Libyans.’ (Wikispooks)
These techniques follow the same pattern time after time.
Look here.
Be shocked.
Support us.
Support war.
As Noam Chomsky wrote, it’s all about manufacturing consent.
The elites want certain things. They know most people are ill-informed at best and mostly completely uninformed. They also know that mainstream media will act as a stenographic service to transmit the required message. Therefore attention is directed where it is wanted. The required consent is gained and the elites effect their plans.
Once the war is begun a one-sided report system takes effect. Activists, for instance in Ukraine, Syria, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela or wherever get to work creating the “news” that will be faithfully channeled to western audiences. Western politicians will pick them up and repeat them and so a wall-to-wall matrix of conditioning permeates every ear, eye and brain with an incessant narrative that spreads the wished for concept that we are fighting evil and that all possible means are required. Radio silence is the approach to those who the western elites wage war against. George Orwell’s vision of a totalitarian society where news is permanently altered to suit the needs of those in control is very accurately reflected in current western society when it comes to regime change.
The White Helmets in Syria is one of the most notorious and obvious examples of a regime change support mechanism. The entity is quite ingenious and incorporates multiple elements that are very effective in duping the somewhat uninformed by pressing their emotional buttons. Apparently heroic rescue squads save little children from the devastated homes bombed by the sadistically evil Syrian and Russian army. What could be better? Supply them with top class video equipment, the finances and logistics and connections to western mainstream media and you have an incredibly potent weapon for sustaining support for the war in Syria. Meanwhile block all communication from the other side with every means possible.
The tactics of misdirection, manipulation and demonization are many. Look to any conflict where western elites have an interest and you will find them. The CIA with its psychological teams creating counterfeit documents and stories to feed willing and/or unsuspecting “journalists”, MI6 doing the same, a plethora of NGOs such as the ‘National Endowment for Democracy (NED)’ that funnels $millions to activists worldwide including in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and anywhere that subversion of regime change targets needs a helping hand. There are tens of thousands of staffers across the western world and also seeded within target nations who work night and day using whatever means are deemed necessary without any reference to what is moral or ethical.
These are the agents of chaos you see at work now.
You wonder why there is no diplomacy any more? Why dialogue and attempts to find agreements to thorny problems are a thing of the past? Why all the elites of the West do is assert blame, attack and threaten rather than seek discourse and a means to reach some compromise?
The peacemakers and diplomats of the West were either sacked, demoted, discarded or simply gave up the ghost after 9/11.
The West has been at war ever since, remains at war now and will remain at war until quarantined by the collapse of their economies and the rise of others.
Until then expect ever more misdirection, manipulation and demonization as this war reaches its ultimate and inevitable climax.
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