{"id":63311,"date":"2015-09-07T12:00:23","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T11:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=63311"},"modified":"2015-09-07T08:27:32","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T07:27:32","slug":"isis-is-americas-new-terror-brand-endless-propaganda-fuels-war-on-terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/09\/isis-is-americas-new-terror-brand-endless-propaganda-fuels-war-on-terror\/","title":{"rendered":"ISIS Is America\u2019s New Terror Brand: Endless Propaganda Fuels \u201cWar on Terror\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ISIS-CIA-cooperation-150x150\"<\/a>3 Sep 2015 – In the wake of World War I, erstwhile propagandist and political scientist Harold Lasswell famously defined propaganda as \u201cthe management of collective attitudes\u201d and the \u201ccontrol over opinion\u201d through \u201cthe manipulation of significant symbols.\u201d[1] The extent to which this tradition is enthusiastically upheld in the West and the United States in particular is remarkable.<\/p>\n

The American public is consistently propagandized by its government and corporate news media on the most vital of contemporary issues and events. <\/em><\/p>\n

Deception on such a scale would be of little consequence if the US were not the most powerful economic and military force on earth.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"[Image<\/a>

[Image Credit: Vice News]<\/p><\/div>A case in point is the hysteria Western news media are attempting to create concerning the threat posed by the mercenary-terrorist army now being promoted as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, or \u201cISIS.\u201d<\/p>\n

As was the case with the US intelligence asset and bogey publicized as \u201cAl Qaeda,\u201d and Al Qaeda\u2019s Syrian adjunct, \u201cAl Nusra,\u201d such entities are\u2014apparently by design\u2014inadequately investigated and defined by major news media. Absent meaningful historical context they usefully serve as another raison d\u2019\u1ec3tre for America\u2019s terminal \u201cWar on Terror.\u201d<\/p>\n

A seemingly obvious feature of such terrorist forces left unexamined by corporate media is that they are observably comprised of the same or comparable personnel unleashed elsewhere throughout the Middle East as part of a strategy proposed during the George W. Bush administration in 2007.[2]<\/p>\n

With the above observations in mind, ISIS is well-financed, militarily proficient, and equipped with modern vehicles and weaponry. It also exhibits an uncanny degree of media savvy in terms of propagating its message in professional-looking videos and on platforms such as YouTube and Twitter. \u201cWestern intelligence services,\u201d the New York Times reports, claim to be \u201cworried about their extraordinary command of seemingly less lethal weapons: state-of-the-art videos, ground images shot from drones, and multilingual Twitter messages.\u201d[3]<\/p>\n

Along these lines, ISIS even received a largely sympathetic portrayal in a five-part series produced and aired by the Rupert Murdoch-backed Vice News.[4] Indeed, Vice News\u2019 \u201cThe Spread of the Caliphate\u201d is reminiscent of the public relations-style reportage produced via the \u201cembedding\u201d of corporate news media personnel with US and allied forces during the 2003 conquest of Iraq.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bsCZzpmbEcs<\/p>\n

The overt support of ISIS, combined with the fact that it is battling the same Syrian government the Obama administration overtly sought to wage war against just one year ago, strongly suggest the organization\u2019s sponsorship by Western intelligence and military interests.<\/p>\n

ISIS\u2019s curious features are readily apparent to non-Western news outlets and citizenries. For example, Iran\u2019s PressTV recently asked its readership, \u201cWhy does the ISIL have such easy access to Twitter, Youtube and other social media to propagate its ideologies?\u201d The answer choices are, \u201c1) Because the ISIL has very capable technicians who can best use social media, or 2) Because the US and Britain have provided the ISIL with unrestricted social media platform[s].\u201d Note that the first choice is the overarching assumption of Western media outlets. Yet perhaps unsurprisingly, 90 percent of PressTV readers selected choice two.[5]<\/p>\n

No such queries are so much as alluded to by major corporate media, all of which are united in the notion that ISIS is an essentially indigenous phenomenon. Yet as coverage of the events of September 11, 2001 and subsequent state-sponsored terrorism indicates, such media are essentially a component of the national security state, their reports and broadcast scripts all but overtly written by intelligence and military organizations.<\/p>\n

In the wake of 9\/11 US news media seldom asked about the origins of Al Qaeda\u2014particularly how it was a product of US intelligence agencies. With the history of Al Qaeda omitted, the Bush administration was permitted to wage war on Afghanistan almost immediately following those staged attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.<\/p>\n

Yet as is much the case with today\u2019s manufactured ISIS phenomenon, that history was readily available, and its careful public examination might have implicated the United States intelligence community in the 9\/11 attacks. \u201cDuring the Cold War, but also in its aftermath,\u201d Michel Chossudovsky observes,<\/p>\n

the CIA\u2014using Pakistan\u2019s military intelligence apparatus as a \u201cgo between\u201d\u2014played a key role in training the Mujhadeen. In turn, the CIA-sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have consistently supported the \u201cMilitant Islamic Base\u201d, including Osama bin Laden\u2019s Al Qaeda, as part of their foreign policy agenda. The links between Osama bin Laden and the Clinton administration in Bosnia and Kosovo are well documented by congressional records.[6]<\/em><\/p>\n

As the United States and world approach the thirteenth anniversary of the most momentous false flag in modern history, the American public would be well-served to remind itself that ISIS is the new Al Qaeda\u2014in other words, the new pretext that will in all likelihood be used by to take police state measures at home and military aggression abroad to new, perhaps unprecedented, levels.<\/p>\n

With the above in mind, it is telling that one of the US government\u2019s greatest fears isn\u2019t ISIS at all. \u201cThe FBI\u2019s most recent threat assessment for domestic terrorism makes no reference to Islamist terror threats,\u201d the Washington Free Beacon reports, \u201cdespite last year\u2019s Boston Marathon bombing and the 2009 Fort Hood shooting\u2014both carried out by radical Muslim Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, the nation\u2019s foremost law enforcement agency is preoccupied with what it deems \u201cdomestic extremism\u201d exhibited by its own subjects.[7] A primary manifestation of such \u201cextremism\u201d is possessing the curiosity to discern and seek out truths and information amidst the barrage of manipulated symbols the government and corporate-controlled media use to undermine a potentially informed public.<\/p>\n

NOTES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1] Harold Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1927\/1971.<\/p>\n

[2] Seymour Hersh, \u201cThe Redirection: Is the Administration\u2019s New Policy Benefitting Our Enemies in the War on Terrorism<\/a>?\u201d New Yorker, March 5, 2007; Tony Cartalucci, \u201cExtremists Ravaging Syria Created by US in 2007<\/a>,\u201d Land Destroyer Report, May 11, 2012.<\/p>\n

[3] Scott Shane and Ben Hubbard, \u201cISIS Displaying a Deft Command of Varied Media<\/a>,\u201d New York Times, August 30, 2014.<\/p>\n

[4] Joe Bercovici, \u201cThanks to Rupert Murdoch, Vice is Worth $1.4 Billion. Could it be in Play Soon?<\/a>\u201d Forbes, August 19, 2014; Medyan Dairieh, \u201cThe Spread of the Caliphate: The Islamic State<\/a>,\u201d Vice News, August 13, 2014.<\/p>\n

[5] PressTV Poll, http:\/\/presstv.ir<\/a>, retrieved on August 30, 2014.<\/p>\n

[6] Michel Chossudovsky, America\u2019s \u201cWar on Terrorism\u201d Second Edition, Montreal CA: Global Research, 2005, 4.<\/p>\n

[7] Bill Gertz, \u201cFBI National Domestic Threat Assessment Omits Islamist Terrorism<\/a>,\u201d Washington Free Beacon, August 29, 2014.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

James Tracy is an educator and political analyst living in South Florida, USA. He received his PhD from University of Iowa. Tracy’s work on media history, politics and culture has appeared in a wide variety of academic journals, edited volumes, and alternative news and opinion outlets. He hosts a weekly interview program, Real Politik, on TruthFrequencyRadio.com, and is also an affiliate of Project Censored. Additional information is accessible at MemoryHoleBlog.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 Prof. James F. Tracy<\/a>, Global Research, 2015<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 globalresearch.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the wake of World War I, erstwhile propagandist and political scientist Harold Lasswell famously defined propaganda as \u201cthe management of collective attitudes\u201d and the \u201ccontrol over opinion\u201d through \u201cthe manipulation of significant symbols.\u201d The extent to which this tradition is enthusiastically upheld in the West and the United States in particular is remarkable. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}