Misinformation/Disinformation
Item (real recent for the benefit of those who don`t remember
the previous all that well): During the bombing of Serbia we
bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three and
injuring several. Now, over the following week, what did we
hear from the networks about China? Did we hear that our
president was abjectly apologizing to the Chinese and begging
their forgiveness for this incredible incompetence and
violation of the most fundamental of diplomatic principle?
We did not. What we heard was that they are a bunch of evil
spies (the implication being, I guess, that therefore it was
okay that we bombed them). This one wasn`t sitting on the
back burner for a matter of weeks, like the Lewinsky story,
but literally for years. The beginning of it goes all the
way back to the Carter Administration, to a time when the
Republicans were looking for any and every way of trying to
discredit President Carter. Suddenly it was announced that
the Chinese had just plunged us into immediate danger of
nuclear holocaust by stealing the secrets of the "Neutron
Bomb" from the United States - on Carter`s watch. (The fact
that there was not one shred of truth to the story did not
bother the networks at the time, and it hasn`t bothered them
recently, either). And did anyone notice how quickly they
wanted to gloss over all the technology that was freely given
to the Chinese by the Reagan and Bush administrations, and
which is the real backbone of their current weapons program?
They had the whole thing composed so that the impression in
the mind of the TV watcher is that our national security has
just absolutely fallen apart on Clinton`s watch, and now,
thanks to his criminal carelessness, we are facing the horrible
danger of nuclear war with China.
Let it blur for a few weeks; and it gets filed away among all
those other things that "everybody knows", and which
are completely untrue.
...more...
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