Comment by Riaz Haq on June 19, 2018 at 9:59pm

Ian Sinclair interviews Dr Florian Zollmann, a Lecturer in Journalism at Newcastle University and author of the recent book Media, Propaganda and the Politics of Intervention (Peter Lang, 2017). Zollmann starts by setting out the main findings of his study.

Florian Zollmann: Leading news organisations in liberal democracies employ a double-standard when reporting on human rights violations: If countries designated to be ‘enemies’ of the West (in my study, I look at cases from the past including the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2012) conduct human rights violations, the news media highlight these abuses and report demands for action to stop human rights breaches. Such measures may entail policies with potentially serious effects for the target countries, including sanctions and military intervention. If, on the other hand, Western states or their ‘allies’ (in my study, I look at cases from the past including the US-led Coalition in Iraq in 2004 and Egypt in 2013) are the perpetrators of human rights violations that are similar or in excess of those conducted by ‘enemies’, the news media employ significantly less investigatory zeal in their reporting and virtually no measures to stop abuses are suggested.

My study shows, on the basis of an assessment of extensive quantitative and textual data, that the news media utilise different journalistic norms in terms of how they convey emotional sentiment, handle facts and evidence, use sources and perspective and classify events. These journalistic double standards, then, translate into a radically dichotomised news framing of problem definitions, responsibility of actors and policy options in response to what constitute relatively similar human rights violations: Official ‘enemies’ are depicted as pariah states, facing international condemnation and intervention. Western states and their ‘allies’ are depicted as benign forces, which may at best be criticised for using the wrong tactics and policy approaches. The dynamics of such dichotomised propaganda campaigns have had the effect that only some bloodbaths received visibility and scrutiny in the public sphere.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/ian-sinclair/propagandistic-nature...

The propagandistic nature of the liberal media: Interview with Florian Zollmann

http://truepublica.org.uk/global/jonathan-cook-the-corporate-medias...

Jonathan Cook: The corporate media’s world of illusions

https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2017/01/17/german-journalist-who-spilled-the-beans-on-cia-media-influence-has-died-at-56-of-heart-attack/

German Journalist Who Spilled the Beans on CIA Media Influence Has Died at 56 of Heart Attack

https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/10/08/non-official-cover-respect...

 

“Non-Official Cover” – Respected German Journalist Blows Whistle on How the CIA Controls the Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGqi-k213eE

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-28/top-german-journalist-adm...

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 9, 2018 at 1:44pm

#Trump administration opposes #breastfeeding resolution, defends formula makers' corporate interests, intimidates sponsoring nations at the @UN affiliated World Health Assembly in #Geneva. #Ecuador #breastmilk https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/health/world-health-breastfeedin...

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

----------

When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

--------------

The showdown over the issue was recounted by more than a dozen participants from several countries, many of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from the United States.

Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.

“We were astonished, appalled and also saddened,” said Patti Rundall, the policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action, who has attended meetings of the assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, since the late 1980s.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 21, 2019 at 10:42am

New Study Finds 50-Year History of Anti-#Palestine Bias in Mainstream #News Reporting. The study, conducted by 416Labs, a Toronto-based consulting and research firm, is the largest of its kind. #media #MiddleEast #Israel #MediaBias https://www.mintpressnews.com/new-study-finds-50-year-history-of-pr...

by Kathryn Shihadah

https://www.mintpressnews.com/new-study-finds-50-year-history-of-pr...

recent media study based on an analysis of 50 years of data found that major U.S. newspapers have provided consistently skewed, pro-Israel reporting on Israel-Palestine.

The study, conducted by 416Labs, a Toronto-based consulting and research firm, is the largest of its kind.

Using computer analysis, researchers evaluated the headlines of five influential U.S. newspapers: the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal from 1967 to 2017.

The study period begins in June 1967, the date when Israel began its military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip – now officially termed the Occupied Palestinian Territories – following its Six Day War against Jordan, Egypt and Syria.

The methodology involved the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP), a type of computer analysis that sifts through large amounts of natural language data and investigates the vocabulary. NLP tabulated the most commonly used words and word pairs, as well as the positive or negative sentiment associated with the headlines.

Using NLP to analyze 100,000 headlines, the study revealed that the coverage favored Israel in the “sheer quantity of stories covered,” by presenting Palestinian-centric stories from a more negative point of view, as well as by grossly under-representing the Palestinian narrative, and by omitting or downplaying “key topics that help to identify the conflict in all its significance.”

The Fifty Years of Occupation study reveals a clear media bias first in the quantity of headlines: over the half-century period in question, headlines mentioned Israel 4 times more frequently than Palestine.

The study revealed other discrepancies in coverage of Israel and Palestine/Palestinians as well.



Sentiment
For all 5 newspapers studied, Israel-centric headlines were on average more positive than the Palestinian-centric headlines.

Sentiment analysis measures “the degree to which ideological loyalty colors analysis.”

In order to measure sentiment, the study employed a “dictionary” of words classified as either positive or negative; each headline was scored based on its use of these words.

The report explains that journalistic standards require news stories to be “neutral, objective, and derived from facts,” but the reports on Israel-Palestine “exhibit some form of institutionalized ideological posturing and reflect a slant.”



Underrepresented Palestinian Voices
The study also found Palestinians marginalized as sources of news and information.

A simple case in point: The fact-checking organization Pundit Fact examined CNN guests during a segment of the 2014 Israeli incursion into Gaza, Operation Protective Edge. Pundit Fact reported that during this time, 20 Israeli officials were interviewed, compared to only 4 Palestinians, although Palestinians were overwhelmingly victims of the incursion with 2,251 deaths vs. 73 Israeli deaths.

The study’s data reveal what it calls “the privileging of Israeli voices and, invariably, Israeli narratives”: the phrases “Israel Says” and “Says Israel” occurred at a higher frequency than any other bigram (2-word phrase) throughout the 50 years of headlines – in fact, at a rate 250% higher than “Palestinian Says” and similar phrases. This indicates that not only are Israeli perspectives covered more often, but Palestinians rarely have an opportunity to defend or explain their actions.

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 1, 2019 at 7:31am

More than 16,000 men fought in the Cuba campaign, but for much of the American public, there was only one regiment that mattered. A dozen correspondents, including Stephen Crane, the novelist already famous for “The Red Badge of Courage,” chronicled the campaign across southeastern Cuba. In New York, customers flocked to Wanamaker’s department store to snatch up the “Rough Rider,” a rakish new style of hat available in a variety of materials, including nutria fur.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/31/opinion/sunday/spanish-american-...

Above all, the Rough Riders became instant celebrities because they embodied the public’s newfound, idealistic militarism. “Whether Fifth Avenue millionaires or Western cowboys, they fought together and died together in Cuba for the great American principles of liberty, equality and humanity,” an editorialist for The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote.

Though America’s engagement with the world would wax and wane over the subsequent decades, that same Rough Rider spirit defined the coming American century. It led millions to enlist in the fight against Germany in World War II, to join the Marines landing at Danang in 1965, to volunteer to invade Iraq in 2003. It justified the permanent expansion of the American military after World War II as a bulwark of democratic freedom in parts of the world most Americans could not locate on a map.

Sometimes, American idealism is in the right place; often it serves as window dressing for baser national designs. But good intentions don’t help Americans know what to do next. The ideals that underwrote the American century also undermine the promise of American power as a transformative force.

The Rough Riders landed in Cuba on June 22, 1898; by August, Spain was suing for peace. Along the way, the United States captured Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, where its troops next fought a three-year counterinsurgency using many of the same brutal tactics the Spanish had employed in Cuba.

-------

"When Americans think about the Spanish-American War, if we think about it at all, we imagine a short, unnecessary and largely irrelevant conflict, hatched by a cabal of hawkish imperialists and yellow-press barons. But the war, however brief, was in fact a defining moment in America’s emergence as a global power. It captured the imagination of millions and changed how everyday citizens saw their place in the world. No longer content to merely inspire freedom for the world’s oppressed, people like Colbert decided they had a personal obligation to bring freedom to them....Rarely have these efforts ended in success. America’s righteousness can be blinding; the virtue of the cause prevents the country from seeing the challenge clearly, whether it is rebuilding Cuba or defeating the Taliban. There is a lot to say for America’s commitment to use its power for the good of the world, but also a need to understand its limits — a lesson that begins with Colbert and the Rough Riders...Aside from ejecting the Spanish, it is hard to argue that the American presence made any of these places better off. But these experiences, and countless others, have done little to tarnish the belief that good intentions can justify rash decisions and disastrous outcomes. America likes to assign the blame for its “bad” wars — the Spanish-American War, Vietnam, Iraq — to devious schemers who trick the public into supporting them: William Randolph Hearst, Lyndon Johnson, neoconservatives. But that lets the public itself off the hook. Underlying all these wars is the same broadly held, deeply committed missionary zeal that drove men like Benjamin Colbert and the Rough Riders to war. Until Americans learn to balance their commitment to global justice with an awareness of the limits to military prowess, the country will continue to make these mistakes.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 7, 2019 at 2:19pm

#Trump told #Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak in 2017 that he was not concerned about Russian meddling in #USA #elections because the #UnitedStates did the same in other countries https://reut.rs/2lQDTRK

President Donald Trump told two Russian officials in a 2017 meeting that he was not concerned about Moscow’s meddling in the U.S. election, which prompted White House officials to limit access to the remarks, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

A summary of Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Russia’s foreign minister and its ambassador to the U.S. was limited to a few officials in an attempt to keep the president’s comments from being disclosed publicly, the Post said, citing former officials with knowledge of the matter.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

A whistleblower complaint about a July phone call in which Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden is at the heart of the U.S. House of Representatives impeachment inquiry launched this week.

A member of the U.S. intelligence community who filed the complaint against Trump said notes from other conversations the president had with foreign leaders had been placed on a highly classified computer system in a departure from normal practice in a bid to protect information that was politically sensitive, rather than sensitive for national security reasons.

Trump’s 2017 meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergei Kislyak was already considered controversial after it was learned that Trump disclosed highly classified information about a planned Islamic State operation.

On election interference, Trump told Lavrov and Kislyak he was not concerned about Russian meddling because the United States did the same in other countries, the Post reported.

CNN, citing people familiar with the matter, said efforts to limit access to Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders extended to phone calls with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters that procedures for handling records of Trump’s conversations with world leaders had changed early in his tenure after calls with Mexico’s president and Australia’s prime minister were leaked.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 26, 2020 at 7:29pm

#Tech Giants #Facebook, #Google and #Apple As New #Landlords Eye Lucrative #Rent Market With End to Eviction Moratorium Could Leave Millions Homeless. A “tsunami” of evictions is about to sweep across the #UnitedStates when 120-day moratorium ends today https://www.mintpressnews.com/tech-giants-position-themselves-as-la...

In a ‘normal’, pre-pandemic economy, a number roughly equal to the population of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania – or about 3.7 million people – are evicted every month in the United States, according to Matthew Desmond, principal investigator of Princeton University’s “Eviction Lab” project, which tracks evictions throughout the country and produces the first nationwide eviction database.

But, come Friday, July 24, those numbers could rise precipitously should the moratorium on evictions, included in the CARES Act be allowed to expire. The legislation afforded renters with a 120 days’ grace period from “fees, penalties, or charges in relation to nonpayment of rent” and barred landlords from filing eviction notices of any kind during that period.

The situation facing low-income communities is exceedingly harsh when considering the endemic economic disparity that characterizes cash-poor communities with scant access to any sort of financial resources or affordable credit. Studies on wealth inequality have shown time and again how excessive rent burdens can leave families on the brink of homelessness over relatively minor, unexpected emergencies like a simple car repair or a doctor’s visit.

A “semi-permanent renter class” has developed among poor African Americans, in particular. 1 in 11 people who fall into this demographic face eviction every year. For the rest of the United States, the rate is 1 in 20. African American communities and other communities of color are the most vulnerable to the approaching deadline, which not only opens the door for the resumption of eviction filings but also brings potentially large bills of fees and penalties, which the CARES Act allowed to accrue for 120 days.



A broad crisis
So far, few lawmakers have come out against the end of the moratorium despite the uncertainty and great potential for popular unrest this is likely to cause. Some cities like Houston have already lifted the eviction freeze leading many in the legal profession to expect a “tsunami” of eviction filings. The prospect of homelessness looms large over working families living on incomes under $40K a year; 40 percent of which lost a source of employment in March, according to Shamus Roller of the National Housing Law Project.

Milwaukee and Cleveland are two of the cities most at risk, with a 40 percent jump in eviction rates from their typical level at this time of year. The American Bar Association’s Task Force Committee on Evictions revealed that a staggering 28 million homes are at risk of coming under eviction orders due to the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Emily Benfer, who chairs the ABA committee is also the co-creator of the COVID-19 Housing Policy Scorecard put out by the Eviction Lab.

In an editorial published Wednesday by NBC News, Benfer called for a “long-term solution to housing precarity and its disproportionate impact on Black and Latinx families” and warned that without “robust government intervention” the “avalanche of evictions” will take a heavy toll on entire communities. She predicts renters will suffer increasing levels of distress as unemployment benefits are cut off and reopened courts begin hearing thousands of pending evictions.

Benfer decried the Trump administration’s attempts to eliminate fair housing rules, that were set up to push back against “longstanding discriminatory housing practices,” echoing her partner at Eviction Lab, Matt Desmond, who contrasted the plight of African American and Latino renters with white American families who are “buffered” from the looming eviction crisis by virtue of most of them owning their own home.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 10, 2020 at 4:20pm

U.S. Public Diplomacy: Background and
Current Issues
Kennon H. Nakamura
Analyst in Foreign Affairs
Matthew C. Weed
Analyst in Foreign Policy Legislation

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R40989.pdf

The United States has long sought to influence the peoples of foreign countries through public
diplomacy (PD) efforts. Public diplomacy provides a foreign policy complement to traditional
government-to-government diplomacy which is dominated by official interaction carried out
between professional diplomats. Unlike public affairs which focus communications activities
intended primarily to inform and influence domestic media and the American people, U.S. public
diplomacy includes efforts to interact directly with the citizens, community and civil leaders,
journalists, and other opinion leaders of another country. PD seeks to influence that society’s
attitudes and actions in supporting U.S. policies and national interests. Public diplomacy is
viewed as often having a long-term perspective that requires working through the exchange of
people and ideas to build lasting relationships and understanding the United States and its culture,
values, and policies. The tools of public diplomacy include people-to-people contact; expert
speaker programs; art and cultural performances; books and literature; radio and television
broadcasting and movies; and, more recently, the Internet. In contrast, traditional diplomacy
involves the strong representation of U.S. policies to foreign governments, analysis and reporting
of a foreign government’s activities, attitudes, and trends that affect U.S. interests. There is a
growing concern among many in the executive branch, the Congress, the media, and other foreign
policy observers, however, that the United States has lost its public diplomacy capacity to
successfully respond to today’s international challenges in supporting the accomplishment of U.S.
national interests.

-------------

A number of congressionally mandated NGOs, many founded during the Cold War, continue to
receive appropriated funds to perform work in support of U.S. foreign policy objectives. These
NGOs seek to develop long-term relationships and to improve foreign populations’ understanding
of and attitudes toward the United States. Among these organizations are the National
Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Asia Foundation, the East West Center at the University
of Hawaii, and the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowship Program.

--------------


The BBG had responsibility for supervising, directing, and overseeing the operations of the
International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB). The IBB included the worldwide broadcasting services
of the Voice of America (VOA) and television’s Worldnet, Cuba Broadcasting, an Engineering
and Technical Operations Office, and various support services. The BBG also had funding and
oversight authority over surrogate radio grantees: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)
and Radio Free Asia (RFA). Among BBG’s responsibilities was to review and evaluate the
operations of the radios, and assess their quality, effectiveness, and professional integrity. It also
was responsible for determining the addition or deletion of the language services under the IBB.16
In 1999, the U.S. government and surrogate services broadcast hours included

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 15, 2020 at 7:41am

American Values or Human Rights? U.S. Foreign Policy and the Fractured Myth of Virtuous Power
December 2003
DOI: 10.1046/j.0360-4918.2003.00084.x
Authors:
John Kane
15.3Griffith University

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/29457664_American_Values_o...

American exceptionalism placed American values at the center of foreign policy, fostering belief in the essential union of American virtue and power. Developing a theme of Henry Kissinger's, this article argues that in Vietnam this union was severed and undermined: America's power was defeated and its virtue assailed. Nixon offered only a pretense of reunion. Carter attempted the real thing by putting universal human rights, not American values, at the heart of foreign policy. His failure was followed by Reagan's denial of sin and reassurance of American values, though the Gulf War of his successor had a deeper impact on the national psyche. Clinton's foreign policy remained subject to the "Vietnam syndrome" and he, despite rhetorical dazzle, developed no new consensus on the disposition of American power. September 11, however, produced a sense of injured innocence in whose defense American power could again be virtuously deployed. The subsequent patriotic surge encouraged George W. Bush to revive American values in foreign policy, with potentially dangerous consequences. Yes Yes

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 15, 2020 at 8:02am

By Malik Khurram Khan Dehwar

@KhurramDehwar


James Peck describes US Govt modus operandi of using civil society activism in order to achieve US foreign policy objectives in: “Ideal Illusions: How the US Govt Co-opted Human Rights" On how “priority targets” are used to ‘guide & navigate’ them toward American way”.


https://twitter.com/KhurramDehwar/status/1305756160008560640?s=20




https://youtu.be/cDIRl_eT7qo

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 15, 2020 at 4:46pm

Excerpt from Peck, James. Ideal Illusions (American Empire Project) (p. 250). Henry Holt and Co.. Kindle Edition. 2010

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Ideal_Illusions/D2g6JdaK4woC?h...

Zeroing in on their likely constituents, Washington identified the “so-called secularists of the Muslim world: Business people, scientists, non-religious educators, politicians, public administrators, musicians, artists, poets, writers, journalists, actors, and their audiences and admirers”98 as the most “moveable” targets. Among these the “priority targets” were liberal secular Muslim academics and intellectuals, who tended to gravitate to universities and research centers, as well as young moderate religious scholars uncomfortable in the mosque. Women’s groups engaged in gender equality campaigns were another natural constituency. Finally, moderate journalists and writers needed help with broadcasting their work back into their own countries and, via the web, throughout the Islamic world. All these moderates had “political values congruent to the universal values underlying all modern liberal societies,”99 but again empowering them as a class might “require an external catalyst.”100 As elsewhere, they needed money, organizing, ideas—and a pan-Islamic context to counter the radicals’ advantage in organization, religious funding, and the centrality of the mosque in the local community.”101 They also needed “conceptual systems to guide and navigate” them toward American ways of thinking102—a far cry from the free flow of ideas Washington supposedly defended. Attention, not information, was key. In the words of a Defense Department task force, “What’s around information is critical. Reputations count. Brands are important. Fifty years ago political struggles were about the ability to control and transmit scarce information. Today, political struggles are about the creation and destruction of credibility.”103 Once again, local leaders could be quietly supported, invited to conferences, praised in the media, given awards and academic appointments, their reputations nourished. If they were abused, they could be spotlighted as human rights fighters; their plight movingly told, their families taken care of. In all these domains Washington appreciated the contributions of human rights—its workers, its honors, its support for NGOs fit with its own agenda well enough.

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