Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Informations War

The headline of the current "Spiegel" the most important weekly political magazine in Germany proclaims, (at least in the TV-ad): "Ahmadinedschad", der Mann, den die Welt fürchtet (the man, the world is afraid of).
A couple of weeks back the Canadian National Post published a deceptive article
claiming that Iran was planning to oblige non-Muslims to wear badges to indicate their ethnicity so that they could be distinguished in public. The article even implied the badges Jews would have to wear would be yellow. The frontpage showed a Jewish couple from Nazi times wearing the yellow "star of David"
This story, although a proven lie, was taken up by American and other media as to present Iran in "the right light".
The "feared" Iranian president is of course just an interpretation by "Spiegel" reporters, but the desired effect is the same.
It´s outright war-propaganda. It´s breaking the "Grundgesetz" (the German constitution), which after the terrible catastrophy of WWII makes "Volksverhetzung" (propaganda in order to instill hatred against groups of people or other nations) a serious crime.
Very few people are actually afraid of the Iranian president, since even those who hate him know quite well, that he has no atomic bombs. And even if he was planning to build some, he would use them only as means of deterrence.
Whoever actually read his address before the UN General Assembly about nuclear weapons and disarmament or the fully (not by by pro-Israeli Memri) translated speechat the anti-Zionism conference or the letter to the US-President, knows that while he is a deeply religious person, he is neither a crazed megalomaniac nor filled with insane hatred against people of other religions or cultures.
Actually a lot of what he says reminds destinctly of the messages of the current and the late Pope of the Catholic Church or of speeches by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan President, who sympathizes with Christian Liberation Theology and with Marxist Fidel Castro.
When the Pope and a Catholic Heretic and a Marxist Atheist and an ultra-conservativ Islamic politician are basically on the same line of thought, and if behind them are hundreds of millions, possibly even billions of people with similar thoughts, then those, who fear this Iranian president who does not want to compromise on ethics and what he sees as right and just, are not "the world" but those who want to control the world and shape it according to their unethical image.

And as conspiracy theoretic I connect these two stories of war-propaganda to what the British Sunday Herald reported a few weeks back:

The Pentagon has already signed off $383 million to force through the document’s recommendations by 2009. Military and intelligence sources in the US talk of “a revolution in the concept of warfare”. The report orders three new developments in America’s approach to warfare:

Firstly, the Pentagon says it will wage war against the internet in order to dominate the realm of communications, prevent digital attacks on the US and its allies, and to have the upper hand when launching cyber-attacks against enemies.

Secondly, psychological military operations, known as psyops, will be at the heart of future military action. Psyops involve using any media – from newspapers, books and posters to the internet, music, Blackberrys and personal digital assistants (PDAs) – to put out black propaganda to assist government and military strategy. Psyops involve the dissemination of lies and fake stories and releasing information to wrong-foot the enemy.

Thirdly, the US wants to take control of the Earth’s electromagnetic spectrum, allowing US war planners to dominate mobile phones, PDAs, the web, radio, TV and other forms of modern communication. That could see entire countries denied access to telecommunications at the flick of a switch by America.