• Watch out for the ‘Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act’
By The Truth Hound
As U.S. House members rant and rave about the supposed need for more civilian gun control—while lacking the will to silence the deadly guns of the U.S. military in its killing of innocent civilians in the arbitrary “world war on terror”—a bill quietly brewing in Congress would create an official “Ministry of Truth” in the federal government.
That’s what critics are saying about H.R. 5181—officially named The Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016. Given the U.S. government’s already dim view of Russia, this bill appears to signal a return to the propaganda wars of the “good old days” of the U.S. Cold War with Russia.
Co-sponsor Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) noted, “As Russia continues to spew its disinformation and false narratives, they undermine the United States and its interests in places like Ukraine.” Kinzinger, who’s working with co-sponsor Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) on this bill, helped introduce it because, “the U.S. has a role in countering these destabilizing acts of propaganda.”
But, if passed, the risk is that this legislation will allow American propaganda to even further infiltrate cable, online, and mainstream news outlets whenever the U.S. government deems necessary. Ironically, CIA news–infiltration already has been happening for decades under Operation Mockingbird and in other unofficial capacities. Congress’s new bill, should it become law, would only legitimize it.
Besides, big media toe the government line most of the time anyway, especially when it comes to upholding the rationale for the unconstitutional practice of worldwide policing and intervention by the military in what the government calls the “war on terror,” which, itself, is an especially corrosive species of deceit masquerading as truth.
PROPAGANDA OF TERROR WAR
“Terror” is a state of panic or dread, or a syndrome of fear resulting from, for example, violence. One cannot wage a war against the “fear” emanating from acts or expected acts of terrorism. Yes, one can battle “terrorists,” since they are living beings who carry out heinous acts. But their identity can be constantly in question, with one alleged terrorist group sometimes carrying out false-flag attacks in order to frame a different group or individual.
That goads the “heroic” West into attacking the wrong people and killing scores of innocents along the way, assuming the West isn’t behind some of the terrorists in terms of funding and supplies, and, of course, for propaganda purposes. When the first Cold War ended and the West needed a new enemy, the faceless terrorist, who’s usually a non-state actor without a uniform, was a good fit for the long haul.
Moreover, fighting “terror,” due to the above factors and other perplexing factors, by definition means fighting forever. Who can ever say we’ve fought terror long and well enough? Who can ever say the war has been “won”? All of this makes this “war” the perfect vehicle for war profiteering by soldiers of fortune within mercenary corporations, for weapons manufacturers, and on and on. Thus, war is on autopilot. And our various freedoms (news & information, speech, bearing arms and others) that we think our militaries “defend” have never been more at-risk of being dissolved.
FUTILE BILL
All told, pushing a bill to create an official truth ministry would simply cement and intensify the disinformation that’s already flowing in the U.S. To hear Kinzinger (an Air Force veteran) tell it in his May 11 news release, the U.S. is the citadel of truth amid oceans of deceit: “At a time when countries like Russia and China are engaging in hybrid warfare campaigns, the United States has a unique opportunity to respond to foreign manipulation by encouraging the free flow of truthful information. This can further prevent conflict and ensure future stability.”
His news release added, “The United States needs the proper tools to defend its interests against this type of foreign manipulation and effectively defeat these new and emerging threats, while also utilizing on-the-ground communities who are targeted by these disinformation campaigns.” The bipartisan House bill is a companion to S.2692 introduced by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Christopher Murphy (D-Conn.). In April of 2014, Murphy, accompanied by war hawk Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), spoke at a forum put on by the Atlantic Council praising the trans-Atlantic agenda being developed by Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission, and the Atlantic Council itself—the main hubs for promoting world governance.
And this push for one-world rule carries with it the “war on terror,” which is used to justify constant war carried out by Western powers in the Middle East in order to topple Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and any others who may present an obstacle to Western hegemony.
H.R. 5181 assigns the State Department, of all agencies, to coordinate the bill’s provisions with the director of national intelligence and the rather obscure federal Broadcasting Board of Governors to set up a “Center for Information Analysis and Response”—eerily reminiscent of the truth ministry from George Orwell’s novel 1984. (One has to wonder if Orwell had a time machine; his predictions of the future have been so uncannily accurate.).
Americans must also ask whether this country needs yet another costly bureaucracy, especially when the government has plenty of existing agencies and resources to counter those relatively rare real threats that sometimes emerge. Moreover, such a ministry would run the risk of further distorting the already untrustworthy reporting that often flows from most U.S. media.