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Air Force Creates "Counter Blog" Response
Plan To Quell Online Dissent
Detailed flow chart orders officers to respond to negative
material
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The US Air Force has announced a “counter-blog”
response plan aimed at fielding and reacting to material from
bloggers who have “negative opinions about the US government
and the Air Force.”
The plan, created by the public affairs arm of
the Air Force, includes a detailed twelve-point "counter
blogging" flow-chart that dictates how officers should
tackle what are described as "trolls," "ragers,"
and "misguided" online writers.
Wired
blog Danger Room summarizes how the chart lays
out a range of possible responses to a blog post:
Airmen can offer a "factual and well-cited
response [that] is not factually erroneous, a rant or rage,
bashing or negative in nature." They can "let the
post stand -- no response." Or they can "fix the
facts," offering up fresh perspective. No matter what,
the chart says, airmen should "disclose your Air Force
connection," "respond in a tone that reflects high
on the rich heritage of the Air Force," and "focus
on the most-used sites related to the Air Force."
Another option offered by the chart is to "monitor the
site for relevant information and comments" while reporting
back to HQ.
Of course, the type of bloggers that Air Force officers will
be able to respond to may be limited due to the fact that the
Air Force actively
blocks access to just about any independent site
with the word "blog" in its web address.
No doubt the Web Posting Response Assessment plan is an offshoot
of the Air Force's "national
cybersecurity initiative", an ongoing $11
million project which is also seeking the capability to hack
into, fully control and even destroy any form of computer or
network in existence.
(Article continues below)
We have previously reported on similar efforts
on behalf of the military and the government to quell online
dissent, as well as more broadly control the information available
to the American public.
Multiple programs are currently being rolled out by the Pentagon
and its offshoot agencies such as DARPA, in a secret war with
the internet that has been described as a $30 billion "electronic
Manhattan Project".
Such ongoing efforts to infiltrate
the Internet and propagandize for the war on terror
are well documented.
CENTCOM has programs underway to infiltrate
blogs and message boards to ensure people, "have
the opportunity to read positive stories,"presumably about
how Iraq is a wonderful liberated democracy and the war on terror
really is about protecting Americans from Al-CIAda.
In May 2008, it was revealed that the Pentagon was expanding
"Information Operations" on the Internet with purposefully
set up foreign news websites, designed to look
like independent media sources but in reality carrying direct
military propaganda.
More recently the New York Times published
an expose on privately hired operatives who have
been appearing on all major US news networks promoting the interests
and operations of the Pentagon and generating favorable news
coverage of the Bush administration while posing as independent
military analysts.
This operation was formally
announced In 2006 when the Pentagon set up a unit
to "better promote its message across 24-hour rolling news
outlets, and particularly on the internet".
Again, the Pentagon said the move would boost its ability to
counter "inaccurate" news stories and exploit new
media.
The program represents another wing of the Pentagon’s
Office of Strategic Influence, publicly announced
after 9/11 but simply the latest incarnation of a PR brainwashing
scam that spans back decades. The OSI exploited legal loopholes
by planting its propaganda in foreign newspapers that would
later be picked up by U.S. newswires. In today's environment
even that seems quaint, with the Pentagon openly and proudly
shouting from the rooftops that they will knowingly violate
the law to indoctrinate the American people.
Perhaps the most alarming case of the military's
information tentacles burrowing their influence deep into media
circles in recent years was in February 2000, when another branch
of the same Pentagon propaganda bureau, Psychological Operations
Command (PSYOPS), had
placed their operatives "in the news division
at CNN's Atlanta headquarters as part of an “internship”
program starting in the final days of the Kosovo War."
FAIR
speculated that the purpose was twofold, one to
directly propagandize the American people via CNN and also potentially
to allow the "military to conduct an intelligence-gathering
mission against the network itself," because the "military
needed to find ways to "gain control" over commercial
news satellites to help bring down an "informational cone
of silence" over regions where special operations were
taking place."
With the knowledge that government propagandists were utilizing
U.S. news network hubs at CNN to run what was described as a
"vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military
conducts to influence a population in enemy territory,"
and that this took place almost eight years ago - just imagine
how infested today's networks and newsrooms are with paid agent
provocateur propagandists whose sole job specification is to
orchestrate methods of mind control over the population of the
United States.
In October
2005 Government Accountability Office investigators
concluded that the Bush administration's secret policy to pay
off influential journalists to plant fake news and positive
spin on Bush's policies was illegal and that the "administration
had disseminated "covert propaganda" in the United
States, in violation of a statutory ban."
A study
by media watchdog Center for Media and Democracy
revealed that, over a ten month span, 77 television stations
from all across the nation aired video news releases without
informing their viewers even once that the reports were actually
sponsored content.
Some of the fake news segments talked
up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted specific
companies' products.
The consequences were not the drafting of new legislation that
would clearly outlaw such actions in future, nor any form of
criminal proceedings against the protagonists. The upshot of
it all was a slap on the wrist for conservative commentator
Armstrong Williams and a request that he pay back part of the
money that the government had given him - not even all of it.
"Armstrong Williams is going to pay back $34,000 to the
government for work he failed to deliver, but who's going to
pay the taxpayers for the rest of the quarter million dollars
Williams was paid for his propaganda services to the administration?,"
asked Congressman George Miller, as the Justice Department hurried
a settlement and swept the whole sordid affair under the rug.
See the Prisonplanet archive on Government
Use Of Fake News for more examples of these practices.
These operations equate to a formal declaration
of psychological warfare on the American people. The military
is engaging in direct propaganda and indoctrination.
Recent history clearly indicates this is just the latest outreach
of an insipid brainwashing agenda that is totally unlawful and
anathema to the U.S. Constitution.
The White House has made it perfectly clear that it will target
American citizens for propagating information harmful to the
interests of the U.S. government and classify them as enemy
combatants. This is codified in sub-section 27 of section 950v.
of the Military
Commissions Act of 2006.
Bush's
own strategy document for "winning the war on terror"
identifies "conspiracy theorists," meaning anyone
who exposes government corruption and its lies about major domestic
and world events, as "terrorists recruiters," and
vows to eliminate their influence in society.
We have even seen the proposal
of legislation that would require bloggers to register
with and regularly report their activities to Congress or face
prison.
The eminently hypocritical tenet of the suggestion that the
military and the Air Force need to "Fix the facts",
correct "inaccurate statements" and "set the
record straight" is borne out by the fact that they participated
in the dissemination of the most lurid and damaging propaganda
since Hitler's final speech - a deliberately fomented lie about
weapons of mass destruction that has killed over one million
Iraqis and thousands of American soldiers.
It is they who constitute the "ragers" and "trolls"
and it is we the alternative media - the fifth estate - that
should mobilize in the infowar to counter their spurious deception.
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