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Monday, 3 October 2016

The move towards World War 111 in Syria - 10/01/2016

Pentagon Paid PR Firm $540 Million to Make Fake Terrorist Videos

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http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2016/october/02/pentagon-paid-pr-firm-540-million-to-make-fake-terrorist-videos/


1 October, 2016



The Pentagon paid a UK PR firm half a billion dollars to create fake terrorist videos in Iraq in a secret propaganda campaign exposed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

PR firm Bell Pottinger, known for its array of controversial clients including the Saudi government and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s foundation, worked with the US military to create the propaganda in a secretive operation.

The firm reported to the CIA, the National Security Council and the Pentagon on the project with a mandate to portray Al-Qaeda in a negative light and track suspected sympathizers.

Both the White House and General David Petraeus, the former general who shared classified information with his mistress, signed off on the content produced by the agency.

The Bell Pottinger operation started soon after the US invasion of Iraq and was tasked with promoting the “democratic elections” for the administration before moving on to more lucrative psychological and information operations.

Former employee Martin Wells told the Bureau how he found himself working in Iraq after being hired as a video editor by Bell Pottinger. Within 48 hours, he was landing in Baghdad to edit content for secret “psychological operations” at Camp Victory.

The firm created television ads showing Al-Qaeda in a negative light as well as creating content to look as though it had come from “Arabic TV.” Crews were sent out to film bombings with low quality video. The firm would then edit it to make it look like news footage.

They would craft scripts for Arabic soap operas where characters would reject terrorism with happy consequences. The firm also created fake Al-Qaeda propaganda videos, which were then planted by the military in homes they raided.

Employees were given specific instructions to create the videos. “We need to make this style of video and we’ve got to use Al-Qaeda's footage,” Wells was told. “We need it to be 10 minutes long, and it needs to be in this file format, and we need to encode it in this manner.”

The videos were created to play on Real Player which needs an internet connection to run. The CDs were embedded with a code linking to Google Analytics which allowed the military to track IP addresses that the videos were played on.

According to Wells, the videos were picked up in Iran, Syria, and the US.

"If one, 48 hours or a week later shows up in another part of the world, then that’s the more interesting one,” Wells explained. “And that’s what they’re looking for more, because that gives you a trail.”

The Pentagon confirmed the PR firm did work for them under the Information Operations Task Force (IOTF) creating content they say was “truthful.” The firm also worked under the Joint Psychological Operations Task Force (JPOTF). The Pentagon said it could not comment on JPOTF operations.

US law prohibits the government from using propaganda on its population, hence the use of an outside firm to create the content.

Documents show the Pentagon paid $540 million to Bell Pottinger in contracts between 2007 and 2011, with another contract for $120 million in 2006. The firm ended its work with the Pentagon in 2011.

In 2009, it was reported that the Pentagon had hired controversial PR firm, The Rendon Group, to monitor the reporting of journalists embedded with the US military, to assess whether they were giving "positive" coverage to its missions.

It was also revealed in 2005 that Washington based PR company the Lincoln Group had been placing articles in newspapers in Iraq which were secretly written by the US military. A Pentagon investigation cleared the group of any wrongdoing.


Western Media Propaganda On Syria Continues



 The war in Syria is a tragedy to say the very least. and yes children are dying as a result of a war that can never seem to come to an end. When Russia was invited by the Syrian President to help in this conflict the tide was shifted in Syria's favor. The Obama administration then stepped up their assistance to the resistance, causing a massive loss of more life and destabilizing the situation further. The west in the mean time is being overwhelmed by by media bias, or is paid propaganda?

News Links:

https://www.rt.com/usa/361385-pentago...
http://ahtribune.com/opinion/1148-hen...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...
http://eaworldview.com/2016/10/syria-...
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/.

Direct aggression by US against Damascus to cause 'tectonic shift' in Middle East - Moscow


FILE PHOTO Residents in Midan, a Christian district of Aleppo, hit by mortar shelling. © Mikhail Alayeddin
FILE PHOTO Residents in Midan, a Christian district of Aleppo, hit by mortar shelling. © Mikhail Alayeddin / Sputnik

RT,
1 October, 2016


If the US launches a military campaign to oust the Syrian government, it would further fracture the country and have tremendous negative long-term consequence for the entire region, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov © Mikhail Voskresenskiy


“If the US launches a direct aggression against Damascus and the Syrian Army, it would cause a terrible, tectonic shift not only in the country, but in the entire region,” Maria Zakharova said during a talk show, which is to be aired fully later on Saturday and has been cited by RIA.


With no government in Damascus, there will be a power vacuum in Syria, which “so-called moderates, who are, in reality, not moderate at all but just terrorists of all flavors, would fill; and there will be no dealing with them,” the diplomat predicted.

“And later it would be aggravated the way it happened in Iraq. We know that [Saddam Hussein’s] Iraqi Army became the basis of the Islamic State. Everything that both the [US-led] coalition and Russia are fighting now stems from it,” Zakharova said.

Russia and the US are accusing each other over the collapse of the ceasefire which was signed last month, but has failed. The US says Moscow did not do enough to win the trust of rebel forces and to prevent the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad from attacking his opponents. Russia says Washington was incapable of separating ‘moderate rebels’ from terrorist groups and keeping them in check for the truce to take hold.


With the collapse of the deal, the Syrian government launched an offensive on rebel-held areas of Aleppo, a city divided between the Syrian Army and dozens of armed groups, including Al Qaeda off-shoot Al-Nusra Front.

The US acknowledged that it had not been going after Al-Nusra Front for months because the terrorists intermingled with ‘moderates’ and the civilian population. At the same time, it accused Moscow and Damascus of war crimes, citing civilian deaths caused by the renewed hostilities in Aleppo.

Russia has voiced concern that the US was deliberately shielding Al-Nusra Front from military action by Russia and Syria, hoping that the terrorist group would help oust the Syrian government
Russia Fears US Planning Attack on Damascus



RT reports part of an interview with Maria Zakharova where she speaks about the US leading a possible strike on Damascus to topple President Bashar Al-Assad. This would cause as she stated a "Tectonic shift" in the Middle East. Her words may also explain why Israel has been beefing-up its Northern Border for such a strike will no doubt spill over into Israel.

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