Detailed flow chart orders officers to respond to negative material
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Friday, Jan 9th, 2009
....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.