Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"The head of the government's Total Information Awareness project, which aims to root out potential terrorists by aggregating credit-card, travel, medical, school and other records of everyone in the United States, has himself become a target of personal data profiling," reports Wired Magazine.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"The State Dept. is looking for a PR firm to promote a monthly Arabic language magazine that it plans to debut in the Spring," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The magazine will be targeted at Muslims aged 18-to-35 living in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia. The International Information Programs unit, which is the result of the Oct. 1999 merger of the U.S. Information Agency into the State Dept., is handling the magazine launch."
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"A dozen years after the Gulf War, public perceptions of it are now very helpful to the White House," media critic Norman Solomon writes in his Media Beat column. "That's part of a timeworn pattern.
Submitted by John Stauber on
CBS's promo for its program says: "Politicians have had to sell the public on going to war since Colonial times, but they never had the arsenal of advertising and communications techniques the Bush administration is using to sell a possible war on Iraq. Bob Simon reports on those techniques and those employed by the elder Bush prior to the 1991 Gulf War.
Submitted by John Stauber on
"The Bush administration has recruited prominent American
writers ... in a campaign started after
9/11 to use culture to further American diplomatic
interests. ... The Smith-Mundt Act ... bars the domestic dissemination of official American
information aimed at foreign audiences. The
essays can, however, be read on a government Web site
Submitted by John Stauber on
Tonight's HBO movie "Live from Baghdad" has journalists repeating the false Iraqi-baby-killing scam perpetrated by Hill & Knowlton PR in 1990. That outrageous stunt before a make-believe congressional committee was part of a multi-million dollar propaganda campaign funded by Kuwait to make sure the US went to war. The crying teenage witness "Nayirah" seen in tonight's HBO film was actually the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S. A year later journalists documented that her babies-thrown-from-incubators testimony was false, but most people still remember it as true.
Submitted by John Stauber on
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) warns that "the fraudulent story of Iraqi soldiers throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators during the occupation of Kuwait in 1990 is depicted as if it were true in 'Live from Baghdad,' the HBO film premiering on the cable network this Saturday that purports to tell the story behind CNN's coverage of the Gulf War. HBO and CNN are both owned by the AOL Time Warner media conglomerate. ...
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq," writes Robert Dreyfuss. "Morale inside the U.S.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"If and when a press corps of 3000 to 5000 lands with the U.S. military in Iraq, should they be prohibited from broadcasting the war live, using their videophones and satellite dishes? Yes, under some circumstances, says Nightline anchor Ted Koppel."
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
War correspondent Leon Daniel was puzzled by the lack of corpses at the tip of the Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Iraq on Feb. 25, 1991. Clearly there had been plenty of killing on the previous day, which marked the beginning of the ground war in Operation Desert Storm. But there were no visible signs of carnage because the army had already plowed dirt over all of the bodies. "What happened at the Neutral Zone that day has become a metaphor for the conduct of modern warfare," writes Patrick Sloyan.
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