To contact us Click HERE

The Daily Bell
News & Analysis

US Military-IndustrialMedia Supports the Greater Good

Thursday, November 15,2012 – by Staff Report
US Military Behind Africa News Websites ... The website'sheadlines trumpet al-Shabab's imminent demise and describe an American jihadistfretting over insurgent infighting. At first glance it appears to be a sleek,Horn of Africa news site. But the site — sabahionline.com — is run by the U.S.military. The site, and another one like it that centers on northwest Africa,is part of a propaganda effort by the U.S. military's Africa Command aimed atcountering extremists in two of Africa's most dangerous regions — Somalia andthe Maghreb. Omar Faruk Osman, the secretary general of the National Union ofSomali Journalists, said Sabahi is the first website he's seen devoted tocountering the militants' message. – AP
Dominant Social Theme: It's swell for the US military-industrialcomplex to counteract terrorist propaganda with its own ...
Free-Market Analysis: The modern US military,certainly post-World War II, has been in the media/propaganda business at homeand abroad – but blunt statements about its presentations are hard to come by.It's not something talked about a lot.
We've noticed that military involvement in media matters isbecoming more overt in the 21st century. This makes sense to us because webelieve the powerelite is moving quickly to expand world governance in order to combat thecorrosive power of the Internet that has revealed and publicized their plans insome detail.
The heavy hand of the military can be obviously seen in Hollywoodnow in such movies as "Transformers" and also in biopics about the"killing" of Osama bin Laden, who likely died ten years ago of MarfanSyndrome.
Osamabin Laden Is Dead Again?
This article about the US military from the AP wire would seem tobe more of the same, then, though even franker than usual – an escalation,therefore, of a dominantsocial theme.
The underlying dominant social theme is that the war on terrorneeds to be combated by whatever means necessary, including out-and-outpropaganda efforts by the US military and its surrogates. A subdominantsocial theme would be that such interference is GOOD.
The really disturbing part of this, again, is the seemingdetermination to inform the public that the US military-industrial complex isin the media business. It seemingly marks a determined attempt at making clearto the public the range of activities that the US government in the service of Money Poweris now pursuing. Here's some more from the article:
"We have seen portal services by al-Shabab for hate and forpropaganda, for spreading violence. We are used to seeing that. In contrast wehave not seen such news sites before. So it is something completelyunique," Osman said.
But although he had noticed prominent articles on the site, whichis advertising heavily on other websites, he had not realized it was bankrolledby U.S. military.
The U.S. military and State Department, a partner on the project,say the goal of the sites is to counter propaganda from extremists "byoffering accurate, balanced and forward-looking coverage of developments in theregion."
"The Internet is a big place, and we are one of many websitesout there. Our site aims to provide a moderate voice in contrast to thenumerous violent extremist websites," Africom, as the Stuttgart,Germany-based Africa Command is known, said in a written statement.
Al-Shabab and other militants have for years used websites totrade bomb-making skills, to show off gruesome attack videos and to recruitfighters. The U.S. funded websites — which are available in languages likeSwahili, Arabic and Somali — rely on freelance writers in the region.
Recent headlines on sabahionline.com show a breadth of seeminglyeven-handed news. "Death toll in ambush on Kenyan police rises to31," one headline said. "Ugandan commander visits troops inSomalia," another reads ...
The site, which launched in February, is slowly attractingreaders. The military said that Sabahi averages about 4,000 unique visitors andup to 10,000 articles read per day. The site clearly says under the"About" section that it is run by the U.S. military, but many readersmay not go to that link.
Once the reality of US involvement has been fully and clinicallyestablished, the article begins to offer rationales for the presentation. Itquotes someone called Abdirashid Hashi (a "Somalia analyst for theInternational Crisis Group") as saying that while he didn't realize US'sinvolvement with the website, he has no issues with it. "I don't thinkthey hide it. That's up there. There's an information war going on, so I don'thave any problem with that."
Hashi's main worry was that writers hired by the site could beharassed or killed. The article then goes on to mention the expense thatinvolves a "larger project that costs $3 million to pay for reporting,editing, translating, publishing, IT costs and overhead."
Not to worry. US military commanders believe the project "ispaying dividends."
Seth Jones, the associate director of the International Securityand Defense Policy Center at the RandCorporation think tank in Washington, said a significant part of thestruggle with extremist groups like al-Shabab is ideological and is a battlefor the hearts and minds of local populations.
"Based on this reality, the U.S. and other governments shouldbe involved in countering extremist messages on websites and other forms ofsocial media. After all, every Arab government provides substantial money totelevision, radio, print media, and Internet sites," Jones said.
What is also disturbing about such statements is that they do notrecognize the larger reality that the US and the West generally are sponsoringmuch of the ideology that this website and others like it are supposed tocombat.
As we have documented in well over a dozen articles – as have manyother alternativemedia outlets, as well – the upheaval in the Middle East and the fall ofsecular governments there has been sponsored in part by the CIA,State Department, etc. via such controlled youth movements as AYM.
Saudi Arabia – a bought-and-paid-for resource of this largercampaign – has been spreading fundamentalist Wahhabismfor half a century under the benevolent eye of US Intel agencies. The MuslimBrotherhood now being installed in Egypt and elsewhere, anotherorganization said to be influenced by the CIA.
It is Money Power behind all of this. The power elites create religioustension between East and West to advance the prospects of globalgovernance. Out of chaos, order, etc.
What is new and different now is the growing acknowledgement byvarious power elite facilities – such as the US military-industrial complex –that, yes, they are indeed proactively seeking to influence the sociopoliticalconversation by funding various media mechanisms.
This is part and parcel of a trend toward acknowledging thehitherto unacknowledged authoritarianismthat sits at the center of Western societies.
Conclusion: It may be an outgrowth ofdesperation, as the Internet itself has "outed" so much of thesepreviously covert operations. Or it may simply spring from a determination tobe more obvious about authoritarian control. We hope it is the former not thelatter