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Rumsfeld Requests 24-hour Propaganda Machine
jasonditz writes "The BBC is reporting that US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is unhappy with the existing propaganda systems in place and insists that the US must create a 'more effective, 24-hour propaganda machine' or risk losing the battle for the minds of Muslims. In an era where we've already got government-created and funded media outlets and the Pentagon bribing Iraqi journalists to run favorable war stories, not to mention other departments paying journalists to endorse their positions, it begs the question, how much more can they possibly do?"
Actually, just because Al Jazeera focuses on Middle Eastern news (gee, imagine that!), does not mean that they aren't a reasonable news source. Of course, your not understanding that only shows what your biases are.
I dunno, seems we'd be more free under the ayatolah sometimes... he wouldn't have the technology to track us like that
well, unless the democrats get control of the senate and impeach our dictator, then it looks like another 3 years worth of damage
We should have never went into Iraq. It was a pretty stupid decision. All we did was legitimize the growing Shiite theocracy. How many American lives were lost for what? Iraq and Saddam had nothing to do with terrorism and the government we will have installed there will have nothing to do with democracy. That's if it lasts longer than 5 years. I'm not saying the Muslim world isn't ready for a democracy but it's going to be a democracy that is starkly different than what we had in mind. Also how friendly will these governments be towards the USA? The administration keeps stating that we must stay in Iraq for the long haul but in reality how long before the government there kicks us out?
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Come on! I thought the propoganda machine was up and running since 1999, why do they need another one? Oh I see, its probably going to be put up as contract work so more money can be funneled into H*B*.
As if 500 billions are not enough.....
I agree with Richard Allen, there are increasingly Anti-American stories, the usual amount of duplicate articles, and overall lower quality than /. of old.
/. worthy, then articles about the Al Jazeera working with Terror Groups should be up on the home page too, or hell start covering some of the things the Arab media says about us, if all that which you comment on are "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters", then it all is
/. have this on the homepage?
And when I say "anti-american" articles, yea saying that 24 propaganda is
http://www.memri.org/
Hey, there is High Tech in Israel, including an Intel fab, which is News for Nerds, so then why doesn't
Hamas Leader Mahmoud Zahar on Al-Manar TV: Why should we recognize Condoleezza Rice... or Israel's right to exist?
It's like this.
One day you and your wife get into a massive argument because you forgot to pick up the milk from the grocery store on your way to work. You are thinking to yourself "why is she so angry, it's just milk and I will go now to get it". What you don't realise is that the argument is not about the milk, it's about the fact that you never listen to her. You think the argument is about one thing, your wife thinks it's about something else.
These cartoons were the spark but the groundwork has been laid down for decades. Sure it's just another minor spitting at muslims and arabas by a western power and maybe they are thinking, "what the fuck, all we did is spit on them, why do have to burn our house down" but the fight has been brewing for a long time.
Oh and one more thing.......
I know lots of people in the west are upset that a few building have been burnt and a few people have died (the vast majority of the people who died were protesters shot by cops by the way). To those people I will say take a moment to think about all the buildings that were destroyed in palestine, afghanistan and iraq and all the thousands of completely innocent people who have died in those countries as well. Maybe their suffering, death and destruction of their property deserves just a tiny little bit of outrage from you too.
Remember that muslims are human too. When you kill them or destroy their town with bombs they hurt too.
evil is as evil does
You ignorant wretch... of course the percentage of Arab Muslims participating in the riots is low, most of them are too busy making bombs and blowing themselves to take time and riot.
When you don't have a warmonger Sect'y Defense like Rumsfeld, you don't go to war when your army isn't ready.
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make install -not war
MTV USA doesn't seem to be slowing down the ChrisTaliban here at home.
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make install -not war
"In an era where we've already got government-created and funded media outlets and the Pentagon bribing Iraqi journalists to run favorable war stories, not to mention other departments paying journalists to endorse their positions, it begs the question, how much more can they possibly do?""
Sadly, it does not beg the question. It might raise a question though. Sure, you can say I am being anal about linguistics, but the meaning of words do matter. Frankly speaking, I do not see any logical fallacy in what Rumsfeld is saying and the posting makes no sense at all.
People really should know the meaning of expressions before using them. Given slashdot is a place where people who supposedly deal with logic on a daily basis hang out, this is even more inexcusable.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
you make think that is funny, but the US government has been accused of being "responsible" in EU courts for not doing enough to warn people in south east ASIA. Thats right, the US government magically is responsible for the safety of Europeans in Asia in the wake of a natural disaster.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Here's some great propoganda that will keep the muslims happy!
... Canada! Recall? those great people who had the balls to stand up to the USA and NOT attack Iraq because they knew Iraq was already fully contained, and that there was no believable evidence of any WMD's at all.
... then you are obliged right now to invade zimbabwe and end that dictatorship ... oh wait! no oil! no daddy to avenge! funny, freedom doesn't matter anymore now does it?
DONT BOMB THE SHIT OUT OF THEM FOR NO JUSTIFIABLE REASON!
How about NOT giving yourselves a president with the intentions of invading a country simply to finish his daddy's job, that was willing to make up any lie in order to get the common american sheep to support the idea.
That's a start.
Need an example?
Think the war really was about freedom?
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Whoa... the degree? It seems to me like Bush Co. started a war to ehrm, expand "Democracy" to a nation that had done nothing at all to us... Killing between 10s to 100s of thousands of innocents. I would say that unfortunately, (because it has not always been this way, the degree to which the American Government moves to impose their culture and morality on the rest of society (The World) seems to be significantly stronger than other cultures. We dont often see the carnage that our "War on Terra" brings to the people of Iraq, and around the world, but do this mental trick and imagine the old communists here on our soil, trying to liberate us from Democracy, then have someone in say friggen Stalingrad do a similar Christ cartooon, dude - we would be up in arms, riots, car burnings... the whole nine. Our problem is that we are often far to "American " oriented - i.e thinking about our problems, our Government, our lack of / loss of freedom - to remember that in the rest of the word our Government (read global representatives) are out killing people in the tens of thousands.... Personally, I'd be quite pissed too. Just my dos centavos. Ok, and I know you are in the UK. I'm not 100% but it seems that the same thing holds, as Blair seems to be an honorary member of Bush Co.
Are you serious? Ok- here is a start:
All of these were achieved on schedule in spite of a bitter insurgency, and they were done with huge public support (as evidenced by the large voter turnout at the elections).
I'll start you off
1) Find Saddams huge arsenal of Weapons Of Mass destruction.
Our pre-war intelligence was just about as wrong as it could get- we didn't find the decade-old decaying stockpiles that we thought we would find, but we did find dozens of hidden and proscribed weapons that we had no idea about before the invasion. It was the discovery of these hidden weapons programs that led David Kay to declare that Iraq was even more dangerous than we had thought before we invaded.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush