Public relations en andere leugens

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Lijsters,

'Wie loopt wanneer achter wie aan' wordt meestal bepaald door de perceptie die mensen hebben.
Deze perceptie kan door 'hard werken' worden geschapen of door het 'scheppen' van dat beeld.  Dit laatste wordt meestal aangeduid
met 'public relations.'

Een aantal stukjes hierover staan in Counterpunch, dat getypeerd wordt op http://www.counterpunch.org/aboutus.html als:
'CounterPunch is the bi-weekly muckraking newsletter edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. Twice a month we bring our
readers the stories that the corporate press never prints. We aren't side-line journalists here at CounterPunch. Ours is muckraking with
a radical attitude and nothing makes us happier than when CounterPunch readers write in to say how useful they've found our
newsletter in their battles against the war machine, big business and the rapers of nature.'

The Robo-Candidate
http://www.counterpunch.org/nader1207.html
"It turned out the latest robo-candidate they were talking about was Republican U.S. Senate candidate Suzanne Haik Terrell who, at this
writing, is in a runoff race with Louisiana Democrat, Senator Mary Landrieu."We now can select the candidate from any state to beat
the Democrats, frame the issues, convey the slogans, raise the money, buy the tv ads and even provide the robo-rebuttals for the
debates." Hah, hah, hah, whopee, said the fast walking fellow who was the younger of the two."

Het stuk is geschreven door Ralph Nader, bekend van o.a. kruistochten tegen defecte produkten, maar ook van de laatste verkiezingen
in de VS. Ralph was toen de kandidaat (maar geen lid van de partij) van de Green Party (http://greens.org/platforms/) en verloor de
verkiezingen (http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/elec2000.html).

Het is niet onwaarschijnlijk dat _als_ Ralph niet had meegedaan Al Gore had gewonnen. Bush won in Florida (25 kiesmannen)
uiteindelijk met 537 meer stemmen dan Gore, terwijl Nader daar ruim 97.000 stemmen kreeg. Gore kreeg in totaal 266 kiesmannen en
Bush 271. Gore had overigens over de gehele VS zo'n 540.000 stemmen meer dan Bush.

How PR Sold the War in the Gulf
http://www.counterpunch.org/stauber1207.html
US Congressman Jimmy Hayes of Louisiana--a conservative Democrat who supported the Gulf War--later estimated that the
government of Kuwait funded as many as 20 PR, law and lobby firms in its campaign to mobilize US opinion and force against Hussein.
Participating firms included the Rendon Group, which received a retainer of $100,000 per month for media work, and Neill & Co.,
which received $50,000 per month for lobbying Congress. Sam Zakhem, a former US ambassador to the oil-rich gulf state of Bahrain,
funneled $7.7 million in advertising and lobbying dollars through two front groups, the "Coalition for Americans at Risk" and the
"Freedom Task Force." The Coalition, which began in the 1980s as a front for the contras in Nicaragua, prepared and placed TV and
newspaper ads, and kept a stable of fifty speakers available for pro-war rallies and publicity events.

Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign. Its activities alone would have
constituted the largest foreign-funded campaign ever aimed at manipulating American public opinion. By law, the Foreign Agents
Registration Act should have exposed this propaganda campaign to the American people, but the Justice Department chose not to
enforce it. Nine days after Saddam's army marched into Kuwait, the Emir's government agreed to fund a contract under which Hill &
Knowlton would represent "Citizens for a Free Kuwait," a classic PR front group designed to hide the real role of the Kuwaiti
government and its collusion with the Bush administration. Over the next six months, the Kuwaiti government channeled $11.9 million
dollars to Citizens for a Free Kuwait, whose only other funding totalled $17,861 from 78 individuals. Virtually all of CFK's budget--$10.8
million--went to Hill & Knowlton in the form of fees.

A Rose By Another Other Name
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison1213.html
The link between active promoters of Israeli interests and policymaking circles is stronger by several orders of magnitude in the Bush
administration, which is peppered with people who have long records of activism on behalf of Israel in the United States, of policy
advocacy in Israel, and of promoting an agenda for Israel often at odds with existing U.S. policy. These people, who can fairly be called
Israeli loyalists, are now at all levels of government, from desk officers at the Defense Department to the deputy secretary level at both
State and Defense, as well as on the National Security Council staff and in the vice president's office

Bush, Cheney and the Great Rip-Off of California Ratepayers
http://www.counterpunch.org/leopold1121.html
How could FERC keep this smoking gun concealed for a year? It's no secret that California politicians and consumer groups have
blamed energy companies like Williams and Enron for the state's energy crisis and even alleged that energy companies created the
illusion of an electricity shortage by shutting down power plants in the state. Had this evidence been released 18 months ago, pre-
Enron, it would have driven that point home. But it wouldn't have jibed with Bush's energy policy, which was made public instead in May
2001. Around the same time, President Bush was in California and met with Gov. Gray Davis about the state's energy crisis. Bush told
Davis the state implemented a flawed energy plan and that and that alone was the reason for electricity price spikes. Meanwhile, FERC
is sitting on a pot of gold and no one in California even knows it.

Brainwashing in the United States
http://www.counterpunch.org/pettifer1008.html
Recently, I had a brush with the manipulation Ritter was talking about. In early September the Nation magazine published a disturbing
article by Jason Vest. This carefully delineated the link between the right-wing Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the
Center for Security Policy (CSP) and the zealous champions of a Likudnik Israel--those Zionist hawks in the Pentagon, Richard Perle,
Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith (known to Washington insiders as "the Kosher Nostra"). These men have been itching for war with
Iraq and saw their chance when George W. Bush was appointed President. They hold as an article of faith, says Vest, "that there is no
difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both
countries is through hegemony in the Middle East." This of course would pave the way for Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, to
realize his dream of establishing a greater Israel by ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the West Bank--driving them into a
destabilized Jordan. For the Bush administration's oil men, hegemony offers full control of the Middle East's oil resources. It is a very
wicked plan.

A day or two after I had read the piece, Kojo Nnamdi, the host of NPR's Public Interest, had open phones for the hour to talk about US
plans for war. I managed to get a line. As I conveyed the gist of Vest's Nation article, Nnamdi turned nasty. He railed against the Nation
(the oldest political magazine in the country)--a bunch of left-wingers of the kind who conspire in dark cellars, he called them. All very
Conradian, Secret Agent stuff. I was hectored for buying into such "conspiracy theories." It was stunningly clear that he felt it his duty
to keep this sort of information off the air and, should it slip through, to aggressively discredit it. Israel, after all, has become the third
rail in American politics. Touch it at your peril. Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland who went on to be an imaginative and
courageous UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has had to learn this lesson. When she voiced criticism of Israel's continued
refusal to comply with the 1967 UN resolution requiring it to withdraw from the Occupied Territories, and called for Israelis to abide by
the Geneva Convention after they committed human rights abuses in Hebron, pressure from Washington ensured Robinson was not re-
appointed.

Groet,

Cees Binkhorst - cees at binkhorst.xs4all.nl

Een paar recente uitspraken:
'Als de VN relevant willen zijn, moeten ze precies doen wat ik zeg.'
'Ik weet dat ik tegen de wensen van de Security Council en de tekst
van het VN-verdrag in ga, maar ik doe het wel om een VN-resolutie
uit te voeren.'
Een oude uitspraak van Thomas Paine uit 1795 "Every man must
finally  see the necessity of  protecting the rights of others as the
most effectual security for his own"

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********