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Over at The Intercept, Greenwald and Fishman did a great job of thoroughly discrediting blatant (effectively) CIA funded propaganda that somehow passed unquestioned as journalism on National Public Radio (NPR). The propaganda itself was merely the usual run of the mill bit trying to smear Snowden or anyone who talks about real cybersecurity (tor/pgp/ssh/etc) as an enabler of terrorists. About as logical as arguing that agricultural professors are helping enable terrorists by teaching everyone, including the terrorists about how to manufacturer their own sustenance for long term survival. What made this bit of propaganda extra slimey, especially for the otherwise generally well regarded NPR, was how the CIA ties were not mentioned.
... Temple-Raston knows all of this. Back in 2012, NPR’s Morning Edition broadcast her profile of Recorded Future and its claimed ability to predict the future by gathering internet data. At the end of her report, she noted that the firm has “at least two very important financial backers: the CIA’s investment arm, called In-Q-Tel, and Google Ventures. They have reportedly poured millions into the company.”
That is the company she's now featuring as some sort of independent source that can credibly vindicate the claims of U.S. officials about how Snowden reporting helps terrorists.
I felt compelled to rebroadcast this to SN because I think it is actually helpful to see the CIA propaganda machine at work, and never forget that it is there, far better funded and at least as relentlessly vigilant as its opposition. And despite a full disclosure that a few years back I myself was effectively getting paid straight from the CIA via In-Q-Tel, and felt thoroughly guilty for it, I have to say I just ADORE the fact that Dan Geer gave up trackable smart phones for the privacy enhanced security of old school pagers.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by gallondr00nk on Tuesday August 19 2014, @09:52PM
The biggest propaganda victory for the authorities in recent memory was Al-Qaeda itself. It's easy to forget, but people were absolute terrified, and most of what we were told, frankly, was a complete fantasy.
There's a good body of evidence that suggests that Al-Qaeda didn't actually exist, beyond a few disgruntled young males prepared to carry out attacks against the west. It certainly doesn't exist in the way most media sources would have you believe.
First, a quick fact. Al-Qaeda actually translates to "the base", referring presumably to the training camp they used.
It didn't actually use the term in regard to itself until after the 2001 attacks, when it realised that's what the USA were calling them. There was no evidence whatsoever that it was anything beyond the middle east - there were no sleeper cells in the US, or anywhere else or that matter. There were no hidden bases in the Afghan mountains, or vast series of encrypted communication networks across the net.
Bin Laden himself was essentially a nonentity, used for his money rather than his leadership skills, in the Afghan war against the Soviets. The ideology behind "the base" was actually Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor turned violent radical and leader of an organisation called Islamic Jihad, that attempted to cause Islamic uprisings in Egypt (by assassinating the president), Algeria, and elsewhere in the 80's and 90's, inspired by the Iranian revolution. All those attempts failed to produce their stated outcomes.
They also produced a lot of terror. The logic of these various groups inspired by Islamic Jihad was that anyone who didn't follow their beliefs was corrupted, and had defied Islam, and could legitimately be killed. This led to groups attempting to liberate their countries by attacking civilians directly, believing that absolute terror was the only way to convince people. Indeed, one group in Algeria took this so far as to say that *everyone* except for their small militia were to be killed.
In the light of these failing revolutions, al-Zawahiri, being a fairly narrow thinker, then concluded that this was not because the people *didn't* want oppressive Islamic states in their countries, but because they had been corrupted by Western ideals. This led to a change of tactics, and from then on he focused on attacking the west directly.
The trouble was very few people bought into this.
There's a video of him and Bin Laden sometime before 9/11, surrounded by armed bodyguards brandishing rifles and machine guns, prior to giving a press conference on how his organisation intends to bring down the corrupting Western influence. It all seems quite convincing, but all the fighters were actually hired for the day, and had to bring their own weapons.
The camps that were the supposed base of Al-Qaeda were mostly training facilities for fighters who were fighting in their own countries - it wasn't a centralised operation.
Instead of a determined but tiny band of genuine terrorists, we instead created an apocalyptic monster, capable of killing us all. Part due to propaganda, part due to brain dead, sensationalist media reporting. We still today link every muslim with a gun to Al-Qaeda, because we still believe the myth that there's a shadowy organisation out there that intends to destroy us.
I sometimes wonder if the Snowden revelations should be treated with more skepticism than they are, but that's a thought for another day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 19 2014, @11:53PM
While I am familiar with some of what you've written, it sure would have been helpful for you to provide links to supporting evidence. Otherwise most readers are left thinking you are just another loon running his mouth on the internet, which isn't very conducive to informing anyone and if your goal isn't to inform people why post in the first place?
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Wednesday August 20 2014, @05:08PM
there was a bbc documentary program on that - Power of Nightmares.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Wednesday August 20 2014, @05:16PM
https://archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares-Episode1BabyItsColdOutside [archive.org]
here, its on archive.org.