Simplicius

Iran made history yesterday by launching “Operation True Promise”. In our usual style here, let’s cut through all the noise currently clogging up social networks and incisively demonstrate the facts as thoroughly as possible, while also pointing out how this was a game-changing and historic event which has brought Iran onto the world stage in a big way.

Firstly, as establishment, Iran’s stated goal for the operation was to strike back at the bases from which the Israeli consular attack was launched on April 1:

IRGC has listed its objectives for last nights missile attack: Ramon and Nevatim airbases (where attack on Iran Consulate was conducted from). Israeli Air Force intelligence HQ in Tel Aviv (where attack on Iran Consulate was planned) and degrading of Israeli air defence radars and assets.

The footage is of the Intelligence HQ getting hit. I have yet to see evidence of 99% interception. Ramon has been badly hit. Nevatim was hit by more than 7 missiles. Air Force Intelligence HQ completely leveled. Other strikes on air defence installations obviously not close to population centres and out of view but I'm sure sat intel will show extent of damage.

And another:

➖Nevatim Airbase in the south of occupied Palestine

➖Ramon Airbase in the south of occupied Palestine

➖The Israeli top-secret intelligence-spy base in Jabal al-Sheikh (Mount Hermon) in the north of the occupied Golan

It should be noted that the rest of the explosions or hits in other areas of the occupied territories are related to the confrontation of the Israeli air defense systems with the projectiles in the sky or the falling of the wreckage of the interceptor missiles or the wreckage of Iranian missiles.

 

Now, let’s get down to the nuts and bolts.

This strike was unprecedented for several important reasons. Firstly, it was of course the first Iranian strike on Israeli soil directly from Iranian soil itself, rather than utilizing proxies from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, etc. This alone was a big watershed milestone that has opened up all sorts of potentials for escalation.

Secondly, it was one of the most advanced and longest range peer-to-peer style exchanges in history. Even in Russia, where I have noted we’ve seen the first ever truly modern near-peer conflict, with unprecedented scenes never before witnessed like when highly advanced NATO Storm Shadow missiles flew to Crimea while literally in the same moments, advanced Russian Kalibrs flew past them in the opposite direction—such an exchange has never been witnessed before, as we’ve become accustomed to watching NATO pound on weaker, unarmed opponents over the last few decades. But no, last night Iran upped the ante even more. Because even in Russia, such exchanges at least happen directly over the Russian border onto its neighbor, where logistics and ISR is for obvious reasons much simpler.

But Iran did something unprecedented. They conducted the first ever modern, potentially hypersonic, assault on an enemy with SRBMs and MRBMs across a vast multi-domain space covering several countries and timezones, and potentially as much as 1200-2000km.

Additionally, Iran did all this with potentially hypersonic weapons, which peeled back another layer of sophistication that included such things as possible endoatmospheric interception attempts with Israeli Arrow-3 ABM missiles.

But let’s step back for a moment to state that Iran’s operation in general was modeled after the sophisticated paradigm set by Russia in Ukraine: it began with the launch of various types of drones, which included some Shahed-136s (Geran-2 in Russia) as well as others. We can see that from the Israeli-released footage of some of the drone interceptions:

At the 0:49 mark you can see what looks like a Shahed, though it appears similar to the jet-engine-equipped Shahed-238 variety.

After a certain pre-timed span, Iran then released cruise missiles so that they could strike roughly in a similar window as the drones. One video from last night confirmed the low-flying cruise missile presence:

It’s not known for certain, but it appears it could be the new Abu Mahdi missile which has the appropriate ~1000km range. Here’s some other possibilities:

Iran missile types

Then, following the appropriate time interval, Iran launched the coup de grace, its vaunted ballistic missiles. Here’s Iran’s own released footage of the start of Operation True Promise, which includes the ballistic launches:

As stated, all three layers of the attack were timed to coincide, with the slowest (drones) going first, then next fastest (cruise missiles), followed by the fastest time-to-target, the ballistic missiles.

The U.S. scrambled a large coalition to shoot the threats down, which included the U.S. itself, UK flying from Cyprus, France, and, controversially, Jordan which allowed them all to also use its airspace and even partook in the shoot-downs.

Dozens of images proclaimed the “successful” shoot-downs of Iranian ballistic missiles, like the following:

The problem is, all of those are the ejected booster stages of two-stage rockets. There is no conclusive proof that any ballistic missiles were shot down, and in fact all the evidence points to the opposite: direct footage of the missiles penetrating the AD net and striking targets. But we’ll get to that.

Missile Types

First: what kinds of ballistic missiles did Iran use?

There are speculations and then there’s what can be dutifully confirmed.

As for the confirmed, with my own eyes from the actual longer released launch video we can see the following:

Which appears to match what is likely the Shahab-3 below:

Here’s another photo from a Shahab-3 test:

In the launch photo, the very top warhead nose cone does appear slightly shorter and may match the Sejjil rocket better. The Sejjil is in fact a much newer evolution of and upgrade to the Shahab that has both a two-stage and three-stage variety for an extremely long range of 2500km+. And some also claim it might be the Ghadr-110, but this is also an evolution and similar ‘upgrade’ of the Shahab-3 system, which likewise looks almost identical.

There are some other launch videos that appear to show possible Zolfagher or the updated Dezful systems as well.

Then there is the closest shot of the launch video, which gives us the most accurate confirmation of one of the missile types:

On the fuselage you can see what appears to be EMA written, and the same can be seen on this photo from today of a “downed missile” somewhere in Iraq:

This comes closest to confirming that missile to be an Emad from the chart above, which is one of Iran’s most advanced and can feature a MaRV (Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicle) warhead. This is where it starts getting interesting, because the hits we saw in Israel appeared to potentially utilize some form of MaRV or hypersonic glide vehicle, which would mean Iran could have made history even beyond what we thought.

So let’s get there by first mentioning the other controversial claim that Iran possibly used its most advanced new hypersonic Fattah-2 system:

In none of the launch videos was this visible, but that doesn’t necessarily preclude Iran having secretly launched and tested some of the above. An Iranian academic stated the following:

"Iran has not fired its hypersonic missiles. In fact, most of the drones and missiles that were fired were older drones and missiles. They were very inexpensive and were used as decoys. So Iran spent a couple of million dollars to force the Israelis to spend $1.3 billion in anti-missile missiles, which was itself a big achievement by the Iranians. And then a number of other missiles that the Iranians fired...cut through and struck their targets," the academic and geopolitical affairs commentator told Sputnik.

And lastly, there are some experts who believe Iran utilized its elusive hypersonic Kheybar Shekan missile, which also features a highly maneuverable MaRV.

These are two shots from last night’s launch video:

And here is a stock photo of the Kheybar nosecone and warhead:

This is where it gets most interesting, and why I’ve prefaced it so thoroughly.

In short: while Israel and the U.S. claim they shot down 100% of everything, and while it’s possible that the drone and cruise missile lures were mostly shot down—though we have no strong evidence one way or the other—we do have evidence that the ballistic missiles largely went unopposed, slicing through what’s claimed to be the densest air defense in the world. Not only Israel’s itself, comprised of a layered defense of David Slings, Arrow-3s, Patriots, and Iron Dome, but also the aforementioned allied airforces, as well as what’s now been reported to be a U.S. Arleigh Burke warship firing upwards of 70+ SM-3 missiles from the Mediterranean shore.

The hits that we saw were spectacular in one profound way: the terminal velocity of the Iranian ballistic missiles appeared stunningly fast. Let’s review some of the most exemplary videos.

Here’s by far the most revealing one, which totally refutes Israeli claims of 100% shoot downs. Note the massive swarm of air-defense missiles going up at the onset, then at the middle mark, watch as Iranian ballistics crash through the AD net totally unopposed at high speed, slamming into the ground:

As a quick aside, this next video was claimed by many to show Israeli Arrow-3 missiles shooting down Iranian ballistics in the exoatmosphere, i.e. in space:

But in reality, all it shows is the stage separation of the Arrow missiles as they climb toward the exoatmospheric zone. It does not show any actual successful interceptions, nor is there any evidence of a single ballistic missile being shot down.

But here’s where we get down to business. The next video is the most eye-opening in terms of the capabilities of these missiles. The two most important things to note are: 1) the terminal velocity right before impact and 2) note how some of the missiles strike very precisely onto the same location in groups.

First video, note the terminal speed here:

SIDEBAR (by TGP editor)
A video published by CNN —News 18 (Indian channel) confirms the sophistication of the Iranian attack. 

CNN-News18

Started streaming 116 minutes ago #israelvsiran #israel #news18live
Israel Vs Iran War | Iran Launches Missile, Drone Attacks LIVE | Israel Iran LIVE News | Iran News Iran has launched dozens of drones and missiles at Israel, the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) confirmed, after Israel said Tehran had begun attacks. The IRGC said on Saturday that it had released the drones and missiles under the operation “True Promise”, adding that the move was part of the punishment for “Israeli crimes”.

---

Simplicius is the nom de guerre of an Slavonic geopolitical analyst. 

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By Robert Parry
Annotated by Patrice Greanville
Consortium News.com,
fraternal websites
ALL CAPTIONS BY THE GREANVILLE POST

Greanville Post Editor's Note

Wittingly or unwittingly, the film's publicity lies from the start: the movie is not based on truth, but its deliberate manipulation. When it comes to active complicity in the heinous crimes of the empire, Hollywood is like Sodom and Gomorrah: it's impossible to find a single Biblical "just person", an actor or director that is without guilt.

A newly discovered document undercuts a key storyline of the anti-Soviet Afghan war of the 1980s – that it was “Charlie Wilson’s War.” A note inside Ronald Reagan’s White House targeted the Texas Democrat as someone “to bring into circle as discrete Hill connection,” Robert Parry reports.

Official Washington’s conventional wisdom about Afghanistan derives to a dangerous degree from a Hollywood movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War,” which depicted the anti-Soviet war of the 1980s as a fight pitting good “freedom fighters” vs. evil “occupiers” and which blamed Afghanistan’s later descent into chaos on feckless U.S. politicians quitting as soon as Soviet troops left in 1989.

The Tom Hanks movie also pushed the theme that the war was really the pet project of a maverick Democratic congressman from Texas, Charlie Wilson, who fell in love with the Afghan mujahedeen after falling in love with a glamorous Texas oil woman, Joanne Herring, who was committed to their anti-communist cause.

Roberts and Hanks using their star power in a disgraceful film. Did they ever have second thoughts?

However, “Charlie Wilson’s War” – like many Hollywood films – took extraordinary license with the facts, presenting many of the war’s core elements incorrectly. That in itself might not be a serious problem, except that key U.S. policymakers have cited these mythical “facts” as lessons to guide the current U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan.

The degree to which Ronald Reagan’s White House saw Wilson as more puppet than puppet-master is underscored by a newly discovered document at Reagan’s presidential library in Simi Valley, California. I found the document in the files of former CIA propaganda chief Walter Raymond Jr., who in the 1980s oversaw the selling of U.S. interventions in Central America and Afghanistan from his office at the National Security Council.

handwritten note to Raymond appears to be initialed by then-National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane and instructs Raymond to recruit Wilson into the Reagan administration’s effort to drum up more Afghan war money for the fiscal 1985 budget. The note reads:

“Walt, Go see Charlie Wilson (D-TX). Seek to bring him into circle as discrete Hill connection. He can be very helpful in getting money. M.” (The notation may have used the wrong adjective, possibly intending ”discreet,” meaning circumspect and suggesting a secretive role, not “discrete,” meaning separate and distinct.)

Raymond appears to have followed up those instructions, as Wilson began to play a bigger and bigger role in unleashing the great Afghan spending spree of 1985 and as Raymond asserted himself behind the scenes on how the war should be sold to the American people.

Raymond, a 30-year veteran of CIA clandestine services, was a slight, soft-spoken New Yorker who reminded some of a character from a John le Carre spy novel, an intelligence officer who “easily fades into the woodwork,” according to one Raymond acquaintance. But his CIA career took a dramatic turn in 1982 when he was reassigned to the NSC.

Amiable fascists: Bill Buckley with Reagan: like two peas in a pod. As a former actor, dissembling was easy for Reagan.

At the time, the White House saw a need to step up its domestic propaganda operations in support of President Reagan’s desire to intervene more aggressively in Central America and Afghanistan. The American people – still stung by the agony of the Vietnam War – were not eager to engage in more foreign adventures.

So, Reagan’s team took aim at “kicking the Vietnam Syndrome” mostly by wildly exaggerating the Soviet threat. It became crucial to convince Americans that the Soviets were on the rise and on the march, though in reality the Soviets were on the decline and eager for accommodations with the West.

Yet, as deputy assistant secretary to the Air Force, J. Michael Kelly, put it, “the most critical special operations mission we have … is to persuade the American people that the communists are out to get us.”

The main focus of the administration’s domestic propaganda was on Central America where Reagan was arming right-wing military juntas engaged in anti-leftist extermination campaigns. Through the CIA, Reagan also was organizing a drug-tainted terrorist operation known as the Contras to overthrow Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.

To hide the ugly realities and to overcome popular opposition to the policies, Reagan granted CIA Director William Casey extraordinary leeway to engage in CIA-style propaganda and disinformation aimed at the American people, the sort of project normally reserved for hostile countries. To oversee the operation – while skirting legal bans on the CIA operating domestically – Casey moved Raymond from the CIA to the NSC staff.

Raymond formally resigned from the CIA in April 1983 so, he said, “there would be no question whatsoever of any contamination of this.” But from the beginning, Raymond fretted about the legality of Casey’s involvement. Raymond confided in one memo that it was important “to get [Casey] out of the loop,” but Casey never backed off and Raymond continued to send progress reports to his old boss well into 1986.

It was “the kind of thing which [Casey] had a broad catholic interest in,” Raymond shrugged during a deposition given to congressional Iran-Contra investigators in 1987. Raymond offered the excuse that Casey undertook this apparently illegal interference in domestic politics “not so much in his CIA hat, but in his adviser to the president hat.”

Raymond also understood that the administration’s hand in the P.R. projects must stay hidden, because of other legal bans on executive-branch propaganda. “The work down within the administration has to, by definition, be at arms length,” Raymond noted in an Aug. 29, 1983, memo.

As one NSC official told me, the campaign was modeled after CIA covert operations abroad where a political goal is more important than the truth. “They were trying to manipulate [U.S.] public opinion … using the tools of Walt Raymond’s trade craft which he learned from his career in the CIA covert operation shop,” the official said.

From the NSC, Raymond organized inter-agency task forces to bombard the U.S. public with hyped-up propaganda about the Soviet threat in Central America and in Afghanistan. Raymond’s goal was to change the way Americans viewed these dangers, a process that the Reagan administration internally called “perception management.”

Lost History.]

Even after the Iran-Contra scandal was exposed in 1986 and Casey died of brain cancer in 1987, the Republicans fought to keep secret the remarkable story of this propaganda apparatus. As part of a deal to get three moderate Republican senators to join Democrats in signing the Iran-Contra report, Democratic leaders dropped a draft chapter on the CIA’s domestic propaganda role.

Iran-Contra’s Lost Chapter.”]

Raping Russians

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]iding the unspeakable realities of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan was almost as high a priority as concealing the U.S.-backed slaughter in Central America. Reagan’s pet “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan as in Nicaragua were tainted by the drug trade as well as by well-documented cases of torture, rape and murder.

Yet, Raymond and his propagandists were always looking for new ways to “sell” the wars to the American people, leading to a clash with CIA officer Gust Avrakotos, who was overseeing the Afghan conflict and who had developed his own close ties to Rep. Charlie Wilson.

According to author George Crile, whose book Charlie Wilson’s War provided a loose framework for the movie of the same name, Avrakotos clashed with Raymond and other senior Reagan administration officials when they proposed unrealistic propaganda themes regarding Afghanistan.

One of Raymond’s ideas was to get some Russian soldiers to “defect” and then fly them from Afghanistan to Washington where they would renounce communism. The problem, as Avrakotos explained, was that the Afghan mujahedeen routinely tortured and then murdered any Soviet soldier who fell into their hands, except for a few who were kept around for anal rape.

“For Avrakotos, 1985 was a year of right-wing craziness,” Crile wrote. “A band of well-placed anti-Communist enthusiasts in the administration had come up with a plan they believed would bring down the Red Army, if the CIA would only be willing to implement it. The leading advocates of this plan included Richard Perle at the Pentagon. … [NSC aide] Oliver North also checked in briefly, but the man who set Avrakotos’s teeth on edge most was Walt Raymond, another NSC staffer who had spent twenty years with the CIA as a propagandist.

“Their idea was to encourage Soviet officers and soldiers to defect to the mujahideen. As Avrakotos derisively describes it, ‘The muj were supposed to set up loudspeakers in the mountains announcing such things as “Lay down your arms, there is a passage to the West and to freedom.”’ Once news of this program made its way through the Red Army, it was argued, there would be a flood of defectors. …

“Avrakotos thought North and Perle were ‘cuckoos of the Far Right,’ and he soon felt quite certain that Raymond, the man who seemed to be the intellectual ringleader, was truly detached from reality. ‘What Russian in his right mind would defect to those fuckers all armed to the teeth,’ Avrakotos said in frustration. ‘To begin with, anyone defecting to the Dushman would have to be a crook, a thief or someone who wanted to get cornholed every day, because nine out of ten prisoners were dead within twenty-four hours and they were always turned into concubines by the mujahideen. I felt so sorry for them I wanted to have them all shot.’

“The meeting [with Raymond’s team] went very badly indeed. Gust [Avrakotos] accused North and Perle of being idiots. … Avrakotos said to Walt Raymond, ‘You know, Walt, you’re just a fucking asshole, you’re irrelevant.’”

However, as Crile wrote, Avrakotos “greatly underestimated the political power and determination of the group, who went directly to [CIA Director] Bill Casey to angrily protest Avrakotos’s insulting manner. The director complained to [CIA operations official] Clair George, who responded by forbidding Avrakotos to attend any more interagency meetings without a CIA nanny present. …

“Avrakotos arrived for one of these White House sessions armed with five huge photographic blowups. … One of them showed two Russian sergeants being used as concubines. Another had a Russian hanging from the turret of a tank with a vital part of his anatomy removed. … ‘If you were a sane fucking Russian, would you defect to these people?’ he had demanded of Perle.

“But the issue wouldn’t go away. Perle, Raymond, and the others continued to insist that the Agency find and send back to the United States the many Russian defectors they seemed to believe, despite Avrakotos’s denials, the mujahideen were harboring. …

“It had been almost impossible to locate two prisoners, much less two defectors. The CIA found itself in the preposterous position of having to pony up $50,000 to bribe the Afghans to deliver two live ones. ‘These two guys were basket cases,’ says Avrakotos. ‘One had been fucked so many times he didn’t know what was going on.’”

But the Reagan administration did calculate correctly that Wilson from his key position on a House Appropriations defense subcommittee could open the spigot on funding for the Afghan muj.

Learning Wrong Lessons

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hile it’s not unusual for Hollywood to produce a Cold War propaganda film, what was different about “Charlie Wilson’s War” was how it was treated by Official Washington as something close to a documentary. That attitude was somewhat a tribute to the likeable Tom Hanks who portrayed the womanizing and hard-drinking Charlie Wilson.

Yet, perhaps the biggest danger in viewing the movie as truth was its treatment of why the anti-Soviet jihad led to Afghanistan becoming home to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorists in the 1990s. The movie pushed the myth that the United States abruptly abandoned Afghanistan as soon as the Soviet troops left on Feb. 15, 1989.

All across Official Washington, pundits and policymakers have embraced the lesson that the United States must not make that “mistake” again – and thus must leave behind a sizeable force of U.S. troops.

lead editorial on May 1, 2012, criticized President Barack Obama for not explaining how he would prevent Afghanistan from imploding after the scheduled U.S. troop withdrawal in 2014, though the Times added that the plan’s “longer-term commitment [of aid] sends an important message to Afghans that Washington will not abandon them as it did after the Soviets were driven out.”

Ryan Crocker and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, as they explained the rise of the Taliban in the mid-1990s and al-Qaeda’s use of Afghanistan for plotting the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001.

In late 2009, Defense Secretary Gates reprised this phony conventional wisdom, telling reporters: “We will not repeat the mistakes of 1989, when we abandoned the country only to see it descend into civil war and into Taliban hands.” However, that narrative was based on a faux reality drawn from a fictional movie.

Gates knew the real history. After all, in 1989, he was deputy national security adviser under President George H.W. Bush when the key decisions were made to continue covert U.S. aid to the mujahedeen, not cut it off.

The truth was that the end game in Afghanistan was messed up not because the United States cut the mujahedeen off but because Washington pressed for a clear-cut victory, rebuffing Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s proposals for a power-sharing arrangement. And we know that Gates knows this reality because he recounted it in his 1996 memoir, From the Shadows.

The Real History

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]ere’s what that history actually shows: In 1988, Gorbachev promised to remove Soviet troops from Afghanistan and sought a negotiated settlement. He hoped for a unity government that would include elements of Afghan President Najibullah’s Soviet-backed regime in Kabul and the CIA-backed Islamic fundamentalist rebels.

Gates, who in 1988 was deputy CIA director, opposed Gorbachev’s plan, disbelieving that the Soviets would really depart and insisting that – if they did – the CIA’s mujahedeen could quickly defeat Najibullah’s army.

Inside the Reagan administration, Gates’s judgment was opposed by State Department analysts who foresaw a drawn-out struggle. Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead and the department’s intelligence chief Morton Abramowitz warned that Najibullah’s army might hold on longer than the CIA expected.

But Gates prevailed in the policy debates, pushing the CIA’s faith in its mujahedeen clients and expecting a rapid Najibullah collapse if the Soviets left. In the memoir, Gates recalled briefing Secretary of State George Shultz and his senior aides on the CIA’s predictions prior to Shultz flying to Moscow in February 1988.

“I told them that most [CIA] analysts did not believe Najibullah’s government could last without active Soviet military support,” wrote Gates.

After the Soviets did withdraw in February 1989 – proving Gates wrong on that point – some U.S. officials felt Washington’s geostrategic aims had been achieved and a move toward peace was in order. There also was mounting concern about the Afghan mujahedeen, especially their tendencies toward brutality, heroin trafficking and fundamentalist religious practices.

However, the new administration of George H.W. Bush – with Gates moving from the CIA to the White House as deputy national security adviser – rebuffed Gorbachev and chose to continue U.S. covert support for the mujahedeen, aid which was being funneled primarily through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the ISI.

At the time, I was a Newsweek national security correspondent and asked my CIA contacts why the U.S. government didn’t just collect its winnings from the Soviet withdrawal and agree to some kind of national-unity government in Kabul that could end the war and bring some stability to the country. One of the CIA hardliners responded to my question with disgust. “We want to see Najibullah strung up by a light pole,” he snarled.

Back in Afghanistan, Najibullah’s regime defied the CIA’s expectation of a rapid collapse, using Soviet weapons and advisers to beat back a mujahedeen offensive in 1990. As Najibullah hung on, the war, the violence and the disorder continued.

Gates finally recognized that his CIA analysis had been wrong. In his memoir, he wrote: “As it turned out, Whitehead and Abramowitz were right” in their warning that Najibullah’s regime might not fall quickly. Gates’s memoir also acknowledged that the U.S. government did not abandon Afghanistan immediately after the Soviet departure.

“Najibullah would remain in power for another three years [after the Soviet pull-out], as the United States and the USSR continued to aid their respective sides,” Gates wrote. Indeed, Moscow’s and Washington’s supplies continued to flow until several months after the Soviet Union collapsed in summer 1991, according to Gates.

Crile’s Account

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]nd other U.S. assistance continued even longer, according to Crile’s Charlie Wilson’s War. In the book, Crile described how Wilson kept the funding spigot open for the Afghan rebels not only after the Soviet departure in 1989 but even after the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991.

Eventually, the mujahedeen did capture the strategic city of Khost, but turned it into a ghost town as civilians fled or faced the mujahedeen’s fundamentalist fury. Western aid workers found themselves “following the liberators in a desperate attempt to persuade them not to murder and pillage,” Crile wrote.

U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Robert Oakley began to wonder who were the worse bad guys, the Soviet-backed communists or the U.S.-supported mujahedeen.

“It was the leaders of the Afghan puppet government who were saying all the right things, even paying lip service to democratic change,” Crile reported. “The mujahideen, on the other hand, were committing unspeakable atrocities and couldn’t even put aside their bickering and murderous thoughts long enough to capture Kabul.”

In 1991, as the Soviet Union careened toward its final crackup, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved nothing for Afghanistan, Crile wrote. “But no one could just turn off Charlie Wilson’s war like that,” Crile noted. “For Charlie Wilson, there was something fundamentally wrong with his war ending then and there. He didn’t like the idea of the United States going out with a whimper.”

Wilson made an impassioned appeal to the House Intelligence Committee and carried the day. The committee first considered a $100 million annual appropriation, but Wilson got them to boost it to $200 million, which – with the Saudi matching funds – totaled $400 million, Crile reported.

“And so, as the mujahideen were poised for their thirteenth year of war, instead of being cut off, it turned out to be a banner year,” Crile wrote. “They found themselves with not only a $400 million budget but also with a cornucopia of new weaponry sources that opened up when the United States decided to send the Iraqi weapons captured during the Gulf War to the mujahideen.”

But even then the Afghan rebels needed an external event to prevail on the battlefield, the stunning disintegration of the Soviet Union in the latter half of 1991. Only then did Moscow cut off its aid to Najibullah. His government finally fell in 1992. But its collapse didn’t stop the war – or the mujahedeen infighting.

The capital of Kabul came under the control of a relatively moderate rebel force led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, an Islamist but not a fanatic. However, Massoud, a Tajik, was not favored by Pakistan’s ISI, which backed more extreme Pashtun elements of the mujahedeen.

Rival Afghan warlords battled with each other for another four years destroying much of Kabul. Finally, a disgusted Washington began to turn away. Crile reported that the Cross Border Humanitarian Aid Program, which was the only sustained U.S. program aimed at rebuilding Afghanistan, was cut off at the end of 1993, almost five years after the Soviets left.

Rise of the Taliban

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hile chaos continued to reign across Afghanistan, the ISI readied its own army of Islamic extremists drawn from Pashtun refugee camps inside Pakistan. This group, known as the Taliban, entered Afghanistan with the promise of restoring order.

The Taliban seized the capital of Kabul in September 1996, driving Massoud into a northward retreat. The ousted communist leader Najibullah, who had stayed in Kabul, sought shelter in the United Nations compound, but was captured. The Taliban tortured, castrated and killed him, his mutilated body hung from a light pole – just as the CIA hardliners had wished seven years earlier.

The triumphant Taliban imposed harsh Islamic law on Afghanistan. Their rule was especially cruel to women who had made gains toward equal rights under the communists, but were forced by the Taliban to live under highly restrictive rules, to cover themselves when in public, and to forgo schooling.

The Taliban also granted refuge to Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, who had fought with the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviets in the 1980s. Bin Laden then used Afghanistan as the base of operations for his terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, setting the stage for the next Afghan War in 2001.

So, the real history is quite different from the Hollywood version that Official Washington has absorbed as its short-hand understanding of the anti-Soviet Afghan war of the 1980s.

The newly discovered document about bringing Charlie Wilson into the White House “circle as discrete Hill connection” suggests that even the impression that it was “Charlie Wilson’s War” may have been more illusion than reality. Though Wilson surely became a true believer in the CIA’s largest covert action of the Cold War, Reagan’s White House team appears to have viewed him as a useful Democratic front man who would be “very helpful in getting money.”

Most significantly, the mythology – enshrined in the movie and embraced by the policymakers – obscured the key lessons of the 1980s: the dangerous futility of trying to impose a Western or military solution on Afghanistan as well as the need to explore negotiation and compromise even when dealing with unsavory foes. It wasn’t the mythical U.S. “abandonment” of Afghanistan in February 1989 that caused the devastation of the past two decades, but rather the uncompromising policies of the Reagan-Bush-41 administrations.

First, there was the ascendance of propaganda over truth. The U.S. government was well aware of the gross human rights crimes of the Afghan “muj” but still sold them as honorable “freedom fighters” to the American people. Second, there was the triumphalism of Gates and other war hawks, who insisted on rubbing Moscow’s nose in its Afghan defeat and thus blocked cooperation on a negotiated settlement which held out the promise of a less destructive outcome.

Those two factors – the deceit and the hubris – set the stage for the 9/11 attacks in 2001, a renewed Afghan War bogging down tens of thousands of U.S. troops, America’s disastrous detour into Iraq, and now a costly long-term U.S. commitment to Afghanistan that is expected to last at least until 2024. With a distorted account of “Charlie Wilson’s War,” Tom Hanks and Hollywood didn’t help.

click here.]

ABOUT ROBERT PARRY
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

Robert Parry, consortiumnews.com, 2018 

Matt Orfalea

Matt Orfalea

Feb 22, 2024

No Amount of Propaganda Can Hide the Fact that Ukraine is Winning this War  (Not 😎 |  Video by Orf

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Matt Orfalea in one of his inimitable spoofs demonstrates that for all its ostensible diversity, US media does not dare deviate from the official monotonic narrative imposed by the US oligarchy on any of the important topics defining reality for most people in the West. This was seen, for example, with the phenomenon of Russiagate, still an unchallenged hoax now making a comeback with the expected victory of Trump in 2024, and currently, the narrative gyrations covering the Ukraine fiasco, the imperial genocide of Palestinians, and the constant demonisation of Washington's main designated enemies, Russia, China, and Iran.

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Patrick Lawrence
SCHEERPOST

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Jay Janson

“The ‘Reality’ Around Us Is Constructed By Liars “Journalists are war criminals” Julian Assange Explains

Assange at the "New Media Days 09" in Copenhagen, November 2009. The thugs hadn't caught up with him yet. 

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Albert Einstein argued that, 

“private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands”, resulting in “an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organised political society”.

Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). (Bold ours)

It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.” [May 1949 edition of socialist magazine Monthly Review]

Thomas Jefferson wrote of Newspapers Lies

Chronologically, 

—vested interests journalism made the killing, capturing, transporting and slavery of Africans acceptable in colonial times and during the early United States of America.

—corrupted journalists drummed up hate against Native Americans and later desire for war and pillage of Mexico.

• Hearst newspapers’ journalists convinced enough Americans to war on Spain, Cuba and the Filipinos 

• journalists working for President Wilson’s established Committee on Public Information created a public desire for entering the First World War.

— journalists made U.S. corporations arming of Hitler’s poor Nazi Germany acceptable as a ‘bulwark’ against Communist Soviet Russia [2]

— Julius Streicher, Nazi newspaper publisher was convicted of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials and was executed by hanging on October 16, 1946

• cooperating journalists made a U.S. genocidal war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia appear necessary as was war in Korea before, and neo-colonial U.S. wars in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East thereafter.

• Journalists reported non-existent popular demonstrations fired upon in Libya, which the UN had cited for its higher standard of living than 9 European countries. Journalists hail US/NATO bombing and terrorist army, slander Gaddafi – did not covera near million Libyans wildly demonstrating in support of their wealthy and democratic Green Book Arab Socialist government. [3] . 

—All mainstream journalists ridiculed Gaddafi’s wonderful address to the UN General Assembly in which he, as no one had done before, described how the UN has sanctified US-NATO invasions and bombings in falsification of its charter from its very beginning, and labeled the UN Security Council correctly, a ‘council of terror.’[4]

• The CIA currently maintains a network of journalists around the world, who influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda, and provide direct access to a large amount of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.”[5][6]

WAR BY MEDIA

At London’s Trafalgar Square, on October 8, 2011 during the U.S. U.K. genocide in Iraq, Australian editor, publisher, activist and founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange spoke encouragingly about how “peace can be started by truth”:                                           

What there is is a transnational security elite that is busy carving up the world using your tax money.

We must form our own networks of strength and mutual value which can challenge those strengths and self-interested values of the warmongers in this country and in others that have formed hand in hand an alliance to take money from the United States, from every NATO country, from Australia and launder it through Afghanistan, launder it through Iraq, launder it through Somalia , launder it through Yemen, launder it through Pakistan and wash that money in peoples blood.

I don’t need to tell you the depravity of war, you are all too familiar with its images, with the refugees of war, with information that we have revealed showing the everyday squalor and barbarity of war.

Information such as the individual deaths of over 130,000 people in Iraq. Individual deaths that were kept secret by the US military who denied that they ever counted the deaths of civilians. [The actual toll, as several sources have snce noted, is much higher, exceeding 1 million.—Ed]

                      “Wars Can Be Undone!”

Instead I want to tell you what I think is the way that wars come to be and that wars can be undone.

                          “Wars Are a Result of Lies.”

In democracies, or the pseudo-democracies that we are evolving into [or have always been], wars are a result of lies. The Vietnam War and the push for US involvement was the result of the Gulf of Tonkin incident . . . a lie. The Iraq War famously is the result of lies. Wars in Somalia are a result of lies. The Second World War and the German invasion of Poland was the result of carefully constructed lies.     

“Average death count attributed to each journalist?”

That is war by media. Let us ask ourselves of the complicit media, which is the majority of the mainstream press, what is the average death count attributed to each journalist?

When we understand that wars come about as a result of lies peddled to the British public and the American public and the publics all over Europe and other countries then who are the war criminals?                        

“Journalists Are War Criminals!”

Gaza as a flagrant example:

First, a Description of  An Ongoing Unmitigated Glaringly Obvious Horrific Criminal Unbearably Cruel Genocide in Gaza and the October 7 Lethal Hamas Attack (Julian Assange said “truth can be started, peace can be started by truth.”)  

Is followed by, The ‘Reality’ of Gaza Reconstructed by Western Media’ Wars Enabling Liars as ‘Acceptable,’ ‘Excusable,’ and/or a ‘Reasonable and ‘Proportionate’ ‘Necessary’ Defensive Reaction,’ and Not Seen as Genocide. Also a ‘Reconstructed October 7 ‘Reality’

The fake "40 beheaded babies" story made a huge splash on Anglo-American media, usually the vilest when it comes to warmongering.

(“Wars Are a Result of Lies.” ( and wars kept going by lies)

Second, a basic reality never mentioned in Western media is that Israel has been killing its own imprisoned Palestinians, imprisoned in its generations long, UN declared illegal, military occupation, while international law regarding military occupation has the occupying power responsible for the well being of its militarily occupied population. Also, Israel’s settling half a million Israelis in occupied Palestinian territory displacing the local population contravenes fundamental rules of international humanitarian law. [7]

Since October 7, in Israeli militarily occupied and blockaded Gaza, more than 27,000 Palestinians,[8] mostly women and children, have already been killed by Israeli Air Force bombings with U.S. supplied warplanes and bombs. Over 66,000 have been wounded,[8] Sixty-six percent of the homes and buildings in the cities of Gaza are estimated tp have been destroyed completely or in part, and thousands of people are believed to be still buried in the rubble.  According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), of the thousands of maimed and crippled children, hundreds have suffered amputations of limbs, many without anaesthesia.[9] Since October 7, Israeli attacks have killed 11,500 children in the Gaza Strip.[10] Thousands more are missing under the rubble, most of them presumed dead.

This grim toll means that one Palestinian child is killed every 15 minutes, or that about one child out of every 100 in Gaza has perished, leading the UN to say that the Gaza Strip is a “graveyard for children“.[11]

Half a million residents are starving with very little food and water and no electricity and most humanitarian aid blocked from being imported.[New York Times Jan. 31] Tens of thousands trying to escape the indiscriminate bombings have been forced into intensely crowded together refuge with little or no toilet facilities, now rampant with disease.

Report: Israel burns down hundreds of homes in Gaza:

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports it has obtained exclusive information saying that Israeli army commanders have been ordering their troops to destroy unoccupied Gaza homes. The commanders have been doing this without obtaining proper legal approval, the report says. “After the structure is set on fire along with everything inside it, it is allowed to burn out until it is rendered useless,” Haaretz wrote. The newspaper cited three Israeli army officials who have been “spearheading” Gaza operations, who confirmed that this is common practice.[12]

The UN Court of Justice is still hearing the great amount of evidence of Israeli committed genocide. US State Dept said “not seeing acts of genocide” in Gaza.[13]. Some Israeli leaders and rabbis have engaged in genocidal talk praised ethnic cleansing operations, one minister suggesting nuclear bombing of Gaza.[14] Western media keeps quoting Isreal’s right to defend itself. All the above mentioned death, suffering and destruction is continually excused by Isreal to be necessary because Israel must kill Hamas to defend itself from future Hamas attack.[15] Western media never questions why Israel could not just defend itself with it vast arsenal of U.S. supplied weapons instead of claiming It has had to kill 10,000 children among more than 27,000 Palestinians in order protect Israel from Hamas (an acronym of its official name), the Islamic Resistance Movement, an elected Palestinian Sunni Islamist political and military organisation governing the Gaza Strip of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. 

The Oct. 7  Hamas Attack

It has been widely reported that at the end of a Jewish holiday on October 7, hundreds of Hamas fighters, and other militants, broke through Gaza’s militarised border, crossed into Israel by land, air and sea and reportedly (with some amount of documentation), killed civilians in the streets, in their homes and at an outdoor rave party.[16]

Israel’s latest official estimated death toll of soldiers and civilians during the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion is 1,200.[17] 

UN Secretary General Guterres stated on October 25.

Hamas issued on Jan. 21, an 18-page document with its official explanation for why it launched its attack on Israel October 7, saying that it was aimed at stopping the expansion of West Bank settlements and bringing an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip. 

Western media journalists keep citing the hostages Palestinian Hamas is holding as one of the reasons for war. [A racist posture that implicitly values Israeli lives 10 or 100 times more than those of Palestinians—Ed] But the thousands of Palestinians who are currently in Israeli prisons are never mentioned. And how many of them are children? First the figure mentioned was 7,000, a month later 9,000. (Since 1967, when Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, it has arrested an estimated one million Palestinians, the United Nations reported last summer. One in every five Palestinians has been arrested and charged under the 1,600 military orders that control every aspect of the lives of Palestinians living under the Israeli military occupation. That incarceration rate doubles for Palestinian men — two in every five have been arrested.)[20] 

Forces of five other militant groups, Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, Al-Azsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Omar Al-Qasim Forces, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Mujahideen Brigades also invaded on Oct. 7, and three groups – PIJ, the Mujahideen Brigades and Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades – claim to have seized Israeli hostages, alongside Hamas, on that day.[21] Hamas says its October 7 attacks in southern Israel were a “necessary step” against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. But the Islamist group admitted in its 16-page report justifying the attack that “some faults happened” due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza.” [22] The Palestinian source said through the memorandum, Hamas was sending a message to the International Court of Justice in The Hague that Hamas should not be judged solely by the events of October 7 without examining Israel’s conduct in the West Bank and Gaza over the past decades.[16]

Hamas pointed to the historical origins of the conflict, saying “the battle of the Palestinian people against occupation and colonialism did not start on October 7, but started 105 years ago, including 30 years of British colonialism and 75 years of Zionist occupation.” [16]

The group said it wanted to “hold the Israeli occupation legally accountable” for the suffering it had inflicted on the Palestinian people. Hamas said the attack was “to confront all Israeli conspiracies against the Palestinian people.” The militant group urged “the immediate halt of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, the crimes and ethnic cleansing committed against the entire Gaza population.”

The group blames Israeli helicopters for killing “many” of the 364 civilians massacred at the Nova music festival, saying that Hamas “had no prior knowledge of it.” [23] The document alleges hypocrisy on the part of those who would accept civilian casualties as collateral damage in Gaza while condemning Hamas’s actions during its "massacres" on October 7.

The document calls for an investigation by the International Criminal Court to look at “the broader context” of the October 7 attack as part of the “struggle against colonialism, as a “national liberation and resistance movement.” The document refers to several clauses in Hamas’s updated charter from 2017, alleging that the conflict is not with the Jews, but rather with Zionism. The section condemns “what the Jews were exposed to by Nazi Germany and praises Muslim nations for having provided Jews a “safe haven” for centuries.

The document says that Hamas receives their legitimacy from the “Palestinian right to self-defence, liberation and self-determination,” claiming that according to “all norms, divine religions and international laws,” as well as the Geneva convention, parties are granted the right to resist when facing “the longest and brutalist colonial occupation,” as well as “massacres” and “oppression.”

It calls on all countries around the world to back “Palestinian resistance” and support the Palestinians’ “struggle for liberation.” Calls on its allies to “support… the Palestinian resistance,” to charge Israel with crimes, to mobilise against “Israeli aggression” on Gaza, and to stop governments from providing further aid or arms to Israel.[22][23]

“Israel has destroyed our ability to create a Palestinian state by accelerating the settlement enterprise,” Hamas said, blaming the United Nations for failing to stop the process. “Were we supposed to continue waiting and relying on the helpless UN institutions?” the document asked. [24] [16] The organisation claimed that Gaza had “been turned into the world’s largest open-air prison” and that the war “was necessary to end the blockade.

And it said it rejected any international and Israeli efforts to decide Gaza’s post-war future. “We stress that the Palestinian people have the capacity to decide their future and to arrange their internal affairs,” the report said, adding that “no party in the world” had the right to decide on their behalf.[19]

Unknown to most western audiences, there has been a steady trickle of evidence from Israeli sources over the past two months implicating Israel’s own military in many of the killings attributed to Hamas. A police investigation shows Israeli Apache helicopters opened fire on attendees of the Nova music festival during the 7 October Hamas attack. [25] Israeli recent investigations have found that a large fraction of the bodies recovered had been charred beyond all recognition. Since the Hamas fighters had only been carrying rifles, Kalashnikov rifles and other small arms, all those victims must have been killed by explosive tank shells and Hellfire missiles. Indeed, newly released video footage revealed that hundreds of Israeli cars had been incinerated by such munitions, suggesting that many if not most of the Israelis killed fleeing the dance festival had probably died at the hands of trigger-happy Apache pilots.

At Kampala, Uganda, on Jan 17, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres addressing a summit of the Group of 77 (G-77) and China, with more than 130 countries– the largest grouping of the global South, representing 80 per cent of the planet’s population, denounced Israel for the “heartbreaking” deaths of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and called it unacceptable to resist statehood for the Palestinian people.[Reuters]      

(Julian Assange said “truth can be started, peace can be started by truth.”)

Now,

The Reconstructed ‘Reality’ of Gaza Reconstructed by Western Media’ Wars Enabling Liars to portray the annihilation in Gaza as ‘Acceptable,’ ‘Excusable,’ and/or a ‘Reasonable and ‘Proportionate’ ‘Necessary’ Defensive Reaction,’ and Not Seen as Genocide. 

(“,,wars can be started by lies,” –then kept going by lies)

Hamas “beheading 40 babies” – headlines and the front  pages of countless western news outlets. U.S. President Biden claimed to have seen “confirmed photos of terrorists beheading babies,” and that “Israeli women were raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies” 

This is journalism that projects thinking the wholesale destruction of Gaza to eliminate Hamas is morally justified.

Hamas is pictured as bloodthirsty savages. 

As mentioned earlier, eventually, but much too late for the damage already inflicted on the public psyche, it was shown this story was a hoax.

Israel's atrocity propaganda out of control

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Hamas beheaded 40 babies, baked another in an oven, carried out mass, systematic rapes, and cut a foetus from its mother’s womb. (None of this is true, first of all because Hamas fighters are highly religious, and the Quran strictly prohibits inflicting harm on women, children, and non-combatants in general. Can anyone, except for a fool, believe that fighters, in the heat of a chaotic battle, with their own lives hanging by a thread, are going to stop to capture women and commit rape?—Ed)

An Israeli first responder to the October 7 terror attack has claimed that Hamas terrorists roasted a baby in an oven in shocking video testimony. Asher Moskowitz, of the United Hatzalah first responder group, published a video of himself speaking to a camera, delivering his witness account.[26] 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken even describing in graphic detail – and wholly falsely – a Hamas attack on an Israeli family: “The father’s eye gouged out in front of his kids. The mother’s breast cut off, the girl’s foot amputated, the boy’s fingers cut off before they were executed. Then their executioners sat down and had a meal.”[27] Hamas beheaded 40 babies, baked another in an oven, carried out mass, systematic rapes, and cut a foetus from its mother’s womb.

Efforts by the United Nations to investigate these claims being obstructed by Israel go unreported.[28]

Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, set the tone as he spoke about October 7. “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true. They could’ve risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime,”

In different ways, the sentiment that the Palestinians are collectively responsible for the actions of Hamas in killing of about 1,200 Israelis and abduction of over 200 – and therefore deserve what is coming to them – has been echoed far beyond Israel’s borders. [29] In the US, Senator Lindsey Graham called for the wholesale destruction of Gaza.

Worldwide reaching colonial media journalism will not report the truth that Israel admits Apache helicopters fired on their own civilians running from the Supernova music festival – even when Tel Aviv Ynet reports it to Israelis.[30]

Western media readiness to re-examine 7 October long after those events took place.

“Israel has the right to defend itself!” Israel has the right to defend itself!” Each and every time Western media conglomerates consider it necessary to report the number of thousands killed in Gaza, media journalists repeat words to the effect that this is “a response to October 7 attack by Hamas — considered a terrorist group by the United States and European Union.” Hamas is a terrorist group!

Blacking Out of Unfavourable News Indicting U.S. led West

This section regarding criminal journalism’s reconstructed ‘reality’ of Gaza and Hamas is perforce quite short, brief because simply not reporting reality is the most major crime in Western entertainment/news conglomerate journalism in hiding 90% of reality. Never mentioning for example, the reality of the immense and deadly suffering of the Palestinians, which is the motive for the very existence of the Hamas militant group. Recently, many news hours have been begun simply covering other world and local events to the exclusion of any mention of the extermination of Palestinians in Gaza

In Conclusion  

White supremacy colonisers always getting away with mass murder both in real time and for generations thereafter has been for some time the accomplishment of the war-investor-controlled CIA-overseen journalists of [6], giant entertainment/news conglomerates, which have been allowed to usurp the use of public owned broadcasting frequencies. This is a government collaboration with war investors, which can and must be challenged, at the same time as taking down the credibility of the war enabling journalists of criminal mainstream media.

Fortunately, there is declining trust in mainstream news outlets, pushing people toward alternative online sources and social media for information,  [31]

Do journalists feel the shame when they pass on deceptive info? Yes, of course some do on occasion, and there is always a segment of the citizenry of varying size that feels responsible for the crimes of its government.

The more info the public has makes it more difficult to pursue policies of war on innocent populations, so the public is a threat that needs to be countered. So whenever an invasion is planned, a  huge public relations campaign goes into gear. [see “Governments and Media roles in War Propaganda” | THE WAR YOU DON’T SEE | John Pilger Documentary YouTube.]

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An Advisory Based on Julian Assange’s Counsel

“So that is our task and it is your task, go and get the truth, get into the ballpark and get the ball and give it to us and we’ll spread it all over the world.”

Countering the CIA-overseen giant entertainment/news/information conglomerates wars enabling deceptive journalism with truth can be more effective than attacking the wars ordering high government officials, both those elected and those appointed, who in reality must take orders form the ‘deep state’ Financial-Military-Industrial-Complex ‘deep pocket’ war investors.[32] 

Julian Assange has brought to our attention the pleasant-looking evening news anchor who captivates TV audiences with alternating joviality and gravitas, asking whether they should be seen as insidiously evil as they generate support for horrific suffering, death, maiming and destruction.

Assange seems to have tasked us to awaken a critical number of decent but unwary citizens to the realisation that a trusted prime time personality of theirs is in fact a war criminal?

End Notes

1. [in a 14 June 1807 letter to John Norvell] The Founders’ Constitution
Volume 5, Amendment I (Speech and Press), Document 29
The University of Chicago Press

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/ Works 10:417–18 amendI_speechs29.html

2. Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler/Antony Cyril Sutton British-American writer, researcher, economist, and Stanford U. professor.

3. There exists not one photo or video of a peaceful protest (CNN reported peaceful protests being fired upon by Libyan soldiers and police.) There Was No Libyan Peaceful Protest, Just Murderous Gangs and Nic Robertson, Information Clearing House, June 20, 2011 .informationclearinghouse.info/article28376.htmcountercurrents.org  – : Long time Italian Prime Minister says Libyans love Gaddafi as Italians P. Nearly one million Libyans, out of a total population of six million, wildly demonstrated in favor of their nation’s government with a mile long green flag while listening to Gaddafi’s voice even as NATO warplanes were bombing nearby in Tripoli. http://www.voltairenet.org/article171382.html

4. Muammar Gaddafi Speech To United Nations. September 23, 2009 (Full) https://countercurrents.org/janson010815.htm

5. “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A,” December 26, 1977, New York Times

6. Mockingbird was a secret operation by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to influence media. Begun in the 1950s, organisation recruited leading American journalists into a network to help present the CIA’s views, and funded some student and cultural organisations, and magazines as fronts and also worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns.

After 1953, Operation Mockingbird had major influence over newspapers and wire agencies, journalists and TV commentators throughout the media wire services and networks that were run by the same deep pockets who the CIA was beholden to for its extraordinarily lavish secret funding. The CIA and the Media – Carl Bernstein, www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.phpAfter leaving The Washington Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein spent six months looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press during the Cold War years. http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php Newly Declassified Govt Docs Reveal Operation Mockingbird is Alive …thefreethoughtproject.com ” Be The Change   http://thefreethoughtproject.com/feds-exposed-planting-talking-points-questions-60-minutes-episode-wikileaks/.   

Operation Mockingbird, CIA Media Control Program – YouTube

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1976, Senator Church live with his investigating committee re Operation Mockingbird.

7. Amnesty International, Jan. 2019, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2019/01/chapter-3-israeli-settlements-and-international-law/ STATUS OF SETTLEMENTS UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW

8. Reports Gaza Ministry of Health and UN

9.https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/children-in-gaza-face-amputations-without-anesthesia-over-1000-have-had-legs-amputated-unicef/ar-AA1mk8S4

10.Aljazeera, Feb. 2.

11. Aljazeera Jan. 25] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/1/25/israels-war-on-gaza-live-israel-kills-9-in-un-shelter-sparking-outrage

12. “Report: Israel burns down hundreds of homes in Gaza” Aljazeera,Feb. 1.

13. US ‘not seeing acts of genocide’ in Gaza, State Dept says, Reuters, Jan. 3, 2024

14. https://apnews.com/article/israel-nuclear-weapons-gaza-iran-china-1e18f34dcec40582166796b0ade65768

15. No, Israel Does Not Have the Right to Self-Defense In International Law Against Occupied Palestinian Territory https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/27551

16. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-21/ty-article/.premium/hamas-releases-memo-explaining-why-it-waged-war-on-israel-gazans-question-timing/0000018d-2d3a-db77-ad9f-ff3abfd30000

17. Israel-Hamas War Israel Lowers Oct. 7 Death Toll Estimate to 1,200, New York Times, Nov 10, 2023 

18. https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2023-10-24/secretary-generals-remarks-the-security-council-the-middle-east%C2%A0

19. Al-Jazeera, Jan. 21] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/21/hamas-says-october-7-attack-was-a-necessary-step-admits-to-some-faults

20.  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/8/why-are-so-many-palestinian-prisoners-in-israeli-jails

21. source Telegram, BBC Research] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67480680

22. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/01/21/hamas-says-october-7-attacks-necessary-step-but-admits-to-faults_6453082_4.html#

23. Hamas releases propaganda doc denying atrocities, blaming Israel for civilian deaths on Oct 7 Jerusalem Post https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-783233

24. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info). https://latheeffarook.com/muslim-world-issues/palestine-gaza-issues-muslim-world-issues/hamas-releases-memo-explaining-why-it-waged-war-on-israel-gazans-question-timing-cite-criticism-of-hamas/

25. IDF combat helicopter targeting Hamas fighters at Nova festival massacre shot some partygoers by mistake, says Haaretz https://www.businessinsider.com/idf-mistakenly-hit-festival-attendees-while-targeting-hamas Rebecca Rommen Nov 19, 2023, 7:26 AM GMT-5 Haaretz reported on 18 November

26. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hamas-killers-roasted-babies-in-an-oven-during-october-attack/ss-AA1jke8o

28. https://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-palestine-war-why-media-ignoring-evidence-israel-own-actions-7-october/5843603

29. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/16/the-language-being-used-to-describe-palestinians-is-genocidal

30. Israeli Apache helicopters killed own soldiers, civilians on …New footage corroborates previous reports that say the Israeli military is responsible for many of the Israeli casualties during https://thecradle.co/articles-id/11993

31. American University https://www.american.edu/sis/news/20231121-how…How Does the Media Impact Public Perception about War?

32. The awful crimes against humanity ordered by President Eisenhower in Laos, Guatemala, Congo and other places indicate that the president was under the thumb of the Military Industrial Complex he warned of on the day he left office.
See author's note below.