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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 12/1/16

The Orwellian War on Skepticism

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NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
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As veteran war correspondent Don North reported in 2015 regarding this new StratCom, "the U.S. government has come to view the control and manipulation of information as a 'soft power' weapon, merging psychological operations, propaganda and public affairs under the catch phrase 'strategic communications.'

"This attitude has led to treating psy-ops -- manipulative techniques for influencing a target population's state of mind and surreptitiously shaping people's perceptions -- as just a normal part of U.S. and NATO's information policy."

Now, the European Parliament and the U.S. Congress are moving to up the ante, passing new legislation to escalate "information warfare."

On Wednesday, U.S. congressional negotiators approved $160 million to combat what they deem foreign propaganda and the alleged Russian campaign to spread "fake news." The measure is part of the National Defense Authorization Act and gives the State Department the power to identify "propaganda" and counter it.

This bipartisan stampede into an Orwellian future for the American people and the world's population follows a shoddily sourced Washington Post article that relied on a new anonymous group that identified some 200 Internet sites, including some of the most prominent American independent sources of news, as part of a Russian propaganda network.

Typical of this new McCarthyism, the report lacked evidence that any such network actually exists but instead targeted cases where American journalists expressed skepticism about claims from Western officialdom.

Consortiumnews.com was included on the list apparently because we have critically analyzed some of the claims and allegations regarding the crises in Syria and Ukraine, rather than simply accept the dominant Western "group thinks."

Also on the "black list" were such quality journalism sites as Counterpunch, Truth-out, Truthdig, Naked Capitalism and ZeroHedge along with many political sites ranging across the ideological spectrum.

The Fake-News Express

Normally such an unfounded conspiracy theory would be ignored, but -- because The Washington Post treated the incredible allegations as credible -- the smear has taken on a life of its own, reprised by cable networks and republished by major newspapers.

But the unpleasant truth is that the mainstream U.S. news media is now engaged in its own fake-news campaign about "fake news." It's publishing bogus claims invented by a disreputable and secretive outfit that just recently popped up on the Internet. If that isn't "fake news," I don't know what is.

Yet, despite the Post's clear violations of normal journalistic practices, surely, no one there will pay a price, anymore than there was accountability for the Post reporting as flat fact that Iraq was hiding WMD in 2002-2003. Fred Hiatt, the editorial-page editor most responsible for that catastrophic "group think," is still in the same job today.

Two nights ago, MSNBC's Chris Matthews featured the spurious Washington Post article in a segment that -- like similar rehashes --didn't bother to get responses from the journalists being slandered.

I found that ironic since Matthews repeatedly scolds journalists for their failure to look skeptically at U.S. government claims about Iraq possessing WMD as justification for the disastrous Iraq War. However, now Matthews joins in smearing journalists who have applied skepticism to U.S. and Western propaganda claims about Syria and/or Ukraine.

While the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament begin to take action to shut down or isolate dissident sources of information -- all in the name of "democracy" -- a potentially greater danger is that mainstream U.S. news outlets are already teaming up with technology companies, such as Google and Facebook, to impose their own determinations about "truth" on the Internet.

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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at
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