“If people knew the truth, the war would end tomorrow. But of course they don't know and can't know," said UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George during a private conversation with C.P. Scott, publisher of the Guardian magazine. This remark was made at the highest of the world's first slaughter, known as planet War I. In the process, 16 million died and 21 million were injured.
John Pilger recalls this in his documentary “The war you cannot see” (The War You Don’t See). "In April 2010, Wikileaks revealed this recording from the conflict chopper cockpit "Apache" in Baghdad in 2007. The chopper shoots its victims from a distance of more than a mile. This is the war you do not see” – this is how the paper begins.
Who's his director? John Pilger is an investigative journalist, author and documentary. He was a war correspondent in Vietnam and Cambodia. He made over 50 documentary films and wrote respective books. The last video on the privatisation of wellness services in the UK is entitled: "The Dirty War on the National wellness Service". John Pilger was twice honored with the British writer of the Year award.
Truth and Lie in War
Lying is the first winner of war. This is the conclusion of our own motion, if we consider that the California politician Hiram Johnson was right, who, at the end of planet War I, said the celebrated sentence: “The fact is the first victim of war.” Arthur Ponsonby writes about it in a book “The Lies of War Times” published in 1928. I urge reading, especially due to the fact that we have a war beyond the east border. It is besides worth taking advantage of the occasion, due to the fact that the Polish translation of the book was late published by Wydawnictwo Vectory. Why only now, erstwhile bookshelves are behind tons of books of nothing? possibly that's why:
“If people are warned, they can be more cautious and have a lower tendency to uncritically accept rumors, explanations, and reprisals prepared for their usage erstwhile the shadow of another war of aggressors on the horizon.
They request to realize that a government that has chosen to undertake specified a terrible and risky undertaking, specified as war, must from the very beginning present a completely ambiguous and unilateral justification for its actions, incapable to afford the right or to let reason to talk in even the smallest case that could sow grain of uncertainty in the heads of those who have chosen to fight. The facts must be distorted, the crucial circumstances of events hidden, and the image presented in specified unambiguous colors to convince the ignorant that their government is blameless, their origin noble, and the apparent wickedness of the enemy proved beyond doubt. A minute of reflection would be adequate for all reasonable individual to see that specified apparent bias cannot in any way correspond to the truth, but that minute of reflection leaves no time. Lies are put into circulation at the highest frequency possible. Mindless masses accept them uncritically and with their agitation influence the remainder of society.
The amount of veritable nonsense and demagoguery that in times of war in all country is regarded as patriotism, is able to origin a blush of embarrassment on the faces of decent people erstwhile they have free themselves of illusions.”
– wrote Arthur Ponsonby.
Lies of War in Ukraine and Nord Stream
"In June last year, U.S. Navy divers, acting under the cover of NATO-wish exercises called BALTOPS 22, installed remote-controlled explosive devices that destroyed 3 of the 4 Nord Stream pipelines 3 months later – this information came from an anonymous informant who was to participate in the operation planning" – a fragment of the article "How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline" by Seymour Hersh.
Who's the author? Investigative journalist, Pulitzer Prize winner. He revealed among others a massacre in the Vietnamese village of My Lai in 1968. Americans killed 504 people (old men, 182 women and 173 children, including 56 infants). Seymour Hersh In 2004, the fresh Yorker magazine revealed the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib Prison. The Iraqis were bullied by soldiers of the United States Army and personnel of private military companies.
"The terrorist of American journalism" was the name Hersha of Pentagon advisor Richard Perle in 2003. It's a very good advice to me, confirming Hersh's credibility.
About Hersh’s article answering the question, “Who blew up Nord Stream?” I learned from John Pilger on Twitter.
Earlier, on Twitter, Mr Radosław Sikorski, Minister of National Defence in the Governments of Marcinkiewicz and Kaczyński (2005–2007), wrote about Nord Stream being blown up by the Americans.
"The thought that the US was behind the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions is ridiculous and is nothing more than a function of Russian misinformation," said Polish Parliamentary spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State Ned Price. It made me even more convinced that there was something going on. Because as the prominent writer Claud Cockburn utilized to say, “Do not believe anything until it is officially demented”.
And 1 more thing in that thread.
It was good, from the point of view of the Polish state that Nord Stream stopped operating. I stress the Polish reason for the state. due to the fact that she's the 1 I'm curious in, not the right American, Russian, Ukrainian, German or Chinese state.
Lies of the War in Bosnia
"Our occupation is to spread information. The velocity of its distribution is essential. erstwhile any information is good for us, we must immediately anchor it in the public, as we know that the first confirmation counts. Dementing information has no meaning," says James Harff of PR agency Ruder Finn Global Public Affairs. Vladimir Volkoff (including Vladimir Volkov) quotes him in his book “A Brief past of Disinformation. From Trojan horse to Internet". I will remind you: Volkoff was a French writer, prof. of the University of Liège, came from a household of Russian expatriates. In Poland he is peculiarly appreciated by the “right” for the book “Montage”. The book shows on the example of KGB, ‘how in practice disinformation mechanisms are used, what is influence agentry, what are ‘resonant boxes’ replicating the thesis desired by the powers of the agentry and how the ‘archy’ of specified boxes is launched’.
Returning to Operation Bośnia – PR agency Ruder Finn Global Public Affairs, from 1991 to 1992, was rented by the Republic of Croatia, the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Kosovo. For what? To disinformation operations against Serbia. The Agency successfully utilized the "Jewish switch" – it engaged the judaic community on the side of the Serbian opponents. She utilized an article on “Serbian concentration camps” published by the fresh York paper “Newsday”.
“In the eyes of the planet opinion, we could connect the Serbs with the Nazis,” says James Harff. They combine them effectively and irreparably. It didn't substance that the Serbs fought the Nazis and were on the judaic side during the war. The fact didn't matter. "Serbs = Nazis".
This message was reinforced by media activities, e.g. utilizing the word "camp". As Volkoff writes: “The honest press has tried to show that the word “camp” in itself has nothing outrageous; let alone Boy Scout camps – 1 must separate between extermination camps, concentration camps, internment camps, exile camps or transitional camps. But the nightmare of Nazi camps is so large that you can't aid it: a decently guided reader will see only the extermination camps everywhere, despite the informing testimonies specified as the evidence of Simone Weill or Elie and Simon Wiesenthal, who clearly stated that Serbian prison camps had nothing to do with Nazi concentration camps."
Another supporter of the disinformation operation “Bosnia” was an afiche with 2 photographers: Adolf Hitler and Slobodan Milošević, with the signature at the bottom: “A talk about cultural cleansing – what does it remind you?”.
And besides “a cherry on a cake”: a celebrated photograph depicting a skinny Bosnian Muslim. ‘The image That Fooled the World” included Cover of Time magazine, August 17, 1992. writer Thomas Deichmann decided to analyse erstwhile his wife pointed out that barbed wires were on the incorrect side of the picture.
It turned out, as Volkoff wrote in his book, that the skinny man in the photograph was called Fikret Alić and was not a prisoner but a refugee; the refugees were outside the barbed meshes and the photographer on the another side; the meshes did not environment any camp but... pastures for cattle!’.
Other lies about Serbach spread by PR agencies include: “ethnic cleansing”, rapes in “abuse camps”, usage of gases (chemical weapons), “downs with dead bodies”, massacre in Sarajevo. Max Clos, in Figaro, April 30, 1994, wrote: “West media have completely allowed themselves to be poisoned without always asking if the versions of the events provided to them are at least likely. Why? due to the fact that in this conflict it is “politically correct” to advocate Muslims against Orthodox Serbos.”
‘American political and economical PR manufacture earns respective billion dollars a yearIt’s okay. ” How much does he make in the war in Ukraine today? In search of answers, follow the lead that John Pilger points to.
Lies of the Iraq War
"A devastating study on Iraq War: Invasion before the exhaustion of peace options" is the title of an article on tvp.info from 6 July 2016. Sir John Chilcot's 12-volume study was prepared on the basis of a seven-year investigation into Britain's participation in the Iraqi war in 2003.
"Today it is clear that Iraq policy was carried out on the basis of erroneous intelligence analyses. No 1 questioned them, but they did," said Sir John Chilcot. It was established that the public was misled – there was no chemical weapon threat from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
This was pointed out in 1998 by Scott Ritter, the UN's chief disarmament inspector in Iraq.
"Charles Hanley, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting stayed in Iraq in January 2003 and went to all the places Bush's people called suspects – to Al-Tuwaitha, to Fallujah. He went to all place that George Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Colin Powell defined in this way and discovered that in any case they were inactive closed since 1991, erstwhile the UN inspectors closed them. On 18 January, he submitted a study that went to all crucial editorial office in the United States, as Associated Press reports go to all crucial editorial office in the United States, and remained virtually unanswered," says Stave Rebdall of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. The study was not published due to the fact that “it did not fit the script. We were going to start a war no substance what."
Sir John Chilcot points out in his study that the United Kingdom entered the invasion of Iraq before exhausting all peaceful options to resolve the conflict. A lot about the lies of war can be learned from the attached report, and secreted over the years a letter Tony Blair sent George W. Bush. It follows, among another things, that both “leaders” made a decision about the war almost 1 year before the actual beginning of the conflict. They did not take into account the opinions of the UN safety Council, legislature or the British Parliament. Blair and Bush were besides aware of the disaster their military intervention would cause.
The study may be adequate to prosecute the war decisions. However, the authors of the Iraq War were not given to court, as were the authors of genocide in Chechens, Tibet is Hiroshima.
When writing about the lies of the Iraq War, it is worth remembering the function of the PR agency. In Iraq, there was a dirty agency. Hill and Knowltonwho carried out a disinformation operation. I wonder if General Colin Powell, then U.S. Secretary of State, utilized her advice in preparing for the spectacle of lies she played in the United Nations—with an anthrax vial and truck drawings for the production of biological weapons? All to justify the "special military operation" in Iraq. This performance has never been challenged by journalists of American mainstream media.
UN: Colin Powell holds the model of the vial arguing that Iraq most likely has weapons of mass destruction.
photo of Public Domain And 2 more Polish accents. May I remind you that Poland has powered the “coalition of the willing”. A coalition whose military actions led to the death of 655.000 civilian Iraqis (source: Bloomberg School of Public wellness of Johns Hopkins University). Most important, however, as the generals have stressed for years, that the Polish military could get priceless combat experience (sic!).
And the second Polish accent – I urge reading "Iraq War Report” whose author is Tomasz Gabiś. I peculiarly urge journalists who deal with politics and do not know who Tomasz Gabiś is.
Members
John Pilger draws attention to the fresh word: "congrating" [embedding], which appeared in the language of the media.
"I very much like this phrase about the Iraq War – a “charted journalist”.
Well, besides many journalists were “combined/cooperative” with the administration on various issues. I'd say 80 to 90% of what you read in the papers is inspired by the government.
If journalists give information about the intelligence community and become critical of the CIA or an crucial intelligence organization, they lose their sources. If they become critical of the Pentagon, it will be very hard for them to get inside it and address authoritative military sources," notes prof. Melvin Goodman, erstwhile CIA analyst. "There are retired generals who service as press agents for all tv networks. It never reveals itself for which military industrial companies they work” adds Goodman.
"When I worked in the Department of Information at the Ministry of abroad Affairs,
We have granted access to the abroad Minister as a kind of award for journalists. If they were critical or thought to be besides hostile to our account of events, we would take distant their ability to fly around the planet with the minister or get exclusive interviews from time to time.
We did the same thing in fresh York. If journalists did not peculiarly support our reports, we cut them off, we made their lives difficult, says Carne Ross, an authoritative working at the Ministry of abroad Affairs of the United Kingdom from 1989 to 2004. In an interview with John Pilger, he says: “I feel very guilty about it, I feel very ashamed about it.”
The movie “The War You Can't See” presents a number of circumstantial situations in which journalists, alternatively of getting the fact themselves, repeated or intensified lies. Examples include the BBC, the fresh York Times, The Observer, Fox tv and CBS News during the Iraq War.
If journalists were looking for the truth, they would have asked hard questions from the very beginning, would have questioned the message of politicians, would have made public government propaganda and disinformation operations, then the Iraq war would not have erupted.
"The problem with interred journalism is that we only know the military's point of view. We do not see and hear the civilians against whom his actions are directed," says Phil Shiner, a lawyer acting on behalf of over a 100 Iraqi families.
At this point it is worth mentioning the facts: 10% of all victims of planet War I were civilians. During planet War II, civilian casualties increased to 50%. During the Vietnam War 70% of all fatalities are civilians. During the Iraq War, civilian deaths were up to 90%.
Uncharted journalists become a threat to military propaganda. In a secret documentary by the British Ministry of Defence, revealed by Wikileaks, investigative journalists pose the same safety threat as terrorists.
As John Pilger notes, journalists who refuse to cooperate with the military are frequently those who study real events.
Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of journalists work with the authorities alternatively of looking at her hands. How many journalists do we have in Poland today?
Only a fewer can admit their mistakes, as did David Rose, a erstwhile writer for The Observer. In his articles he promoted the invasion of Iraq, and after years he commented: “I am sick, I feel angry and ashamed.” erstwhile asked if journalists co-responsible for Iraq's crimes, he says, ‘Yes’.
At this point it is worth recalling the communicative of "intellectual prostitutes". In 1880, John Swinton, a fresh York journalist, was an honorary guest at a banquet issued by media craft leaders. erstwhile 1 of the participants offered to toast to an independent press, Swinton gave this “thought of crime”:
“Every 1 here knows that there is no independent press. You know it, and I know it: neither 1 of you would dare to advertise your opinions in the papers; and if he did, you realize that they would never be printed. I get a dollar a week to refrain from expressing my own views and opinions in the paper I work in. Many here receive a akin payment on identical terms. If any of you were crazy adequate to describe things honestly, you'd be on the street right now. If I had allowed my actual opinions to be published in any issue of the newspaper, I would have lost my occupation in little than 24 hours. The journalist's work is to destruct the truth, lie to power, depravity, defilement, crawl at the feet of a mammon, sale himself, sale his country and his nation in exchange for his regular bread, or – which comes down to the same – for his salary. You know that, and I know that. So what madness to toast to independent press!
We journalists are vassals, instruments in the hands of rich men who secretly game and direct everything from behind the scenes! We're their puppets! They pull the strings and we dance! Our time, our possible and our talents are in the hands of these people. We are intellectual prostitutes!’
(Source: Labor’s Untold Story, Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, United Electrical, Radio & device Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979).
Lies of War – how to defend yourself?
Edward L. Bernays, author of the classical book Propaganda He wrote: “A vital feature of democratic society is the conscious and intelligent control of the behaviours and opinions of the crowd. Those who manipulate these processes in society make an invisible government with real power over the country."
How do we defend ourselves against propaganda and disinformation of the invisible government? I urge reading carefully what they wrote in their books Ponsonby and Volkoff. I peculiarly remembered 1 of the other's warnings:
"It is almost certain that something bad is happening erstwhile opposition media agree with each another even in detail."
Resisting the lies of times of war is peculiarly crucial present erstwhile there is simply a substitute war between America and China behind our east border. erstwhile he tries to get active in this war, in the front, us, Poles. An example? On March 6, 2022, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announces that the United States is considering sending aircraft to Poland if Warsaw decides to hand over Ukrainian fighters.
"None of the heroes ready for suffering and sacrifice, no of the crowd of men willing to service and obey will be inclined to perceive to the call of their country erstwhile it discovers the poisoned origin from which this call comes and recognizes the monstrous hand of falsehood that points the way to the battlefield," wrote Arthur Ponsonby. Are you ready to go to war present “for our freedom and your freedom”?
And 1 last thing, giving you a heads-up. Am I a pacifist? No, I'm not a pacifist. I'm not a blind mole either.. I'm a realist. And a writer who wants to be able to look himself in the mirror without disgust all morning. And the stakes are besides advanced to afford the luxury of conformism.
Tracks into the rabbit hole:
- Volkoff Vladimir, A brief past of misinformation. From Trojan horse to Internet, Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Vectory, 2022. applicable guide on how to defend yourself against brainwashing.
- Volkoff Vladimir, Psychosociation technology. Disinformation. The Order of War, Komors: ANTYK Publishing home Marcin Dybowski, 1999. The antidote to our disinformation and manipulation, the anthology of respective texts of prominent theorists and practitioners of intellectual warfare, selected and commented on by the author in specified a way as to show goals, methods and means of influencing public opinion, and thus enable the reader to admit and defend them.
- Ponsonby Arthur, Lies of War Times, Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Vectory, 2022. How to convince people to support and participate in war. How to defend yourself.
- Bernays Edward, Propaganda, Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Vectory, 2020. The classical propaganda.
- A War You Can't See (2010), dir.John Pilger reasoning a documentary about war propaganda: how governments manipulate facts and how most media and journalists let them to do so.
- A War You Can't See, Textual evidence of words spoken in the movie in Polish. Thank you very much for your translation.
- @johnpilger Information on uncharted and interred journalism.
