President Bashar al-Assad

An ambassador is a … gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.
— Attributed to Sir Henry Wotton, 1568-1639

Manipulation of public perception has risen to a new level with the emergence of powerful social media. Facebook, Twitter and Google are multibillion dollar corporate giants hugely influencing public understanding.  Social media campaigns include paid ‘boosting’ of Facebook posts, paid promotion of Tweets, and biased results from search engines. Marketing and advertising companies use social media to promote their clients.  U.S. foreign policy managers hire these companies to influence public perception to support U.S. foreign policy goals.

A new band out of Los Angeles called PartyBaby recently released their excellent pop-punk debut album, the title of which perfectly captures the time we’re living through: The Golden Age of Bullshit. On the cover three or four teens scamper through a splashing surf. There’s lots of laughter and frivolity. It’s just an innocent day at the beach. But behind them, a mushroom cloud erupts out of the deep water. The teens are oblivious.

At the recent annual convention of Veterans for Peace, VFP Vice President Jerry Condon said: “The US peace movement has been demobilized by disinformation on Syria.”
Disinformation and propaganda on Syria takes three distinct forms. The first is the demonization of the Syrian leadership. The second is the romanticization of the opposition. The third form involves attacking anyone questioning the preceding characterizations.

The exoneration of a man accused of the worst of crimes, genocide, made no headlines. Neither the BBC nor CNN covered it. The Guardian allowed a brief commentary. Such a rare official admission was buried or suppressed, understandably. It would explain too much about how the rulers of the world rule.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre at Srebrenica.

Peace is an interlude between wars.
— Benito Mussolini

We live in a time when state-corporate interests are cooperating to produce propaganda blitzes intended to raise public support for the demonisation and destruction of establishment enemies.
Below, we will examine five key components of an effective propaganda campaign of this kind.
1: Dramatic New Evidence
A propaganda blitz is often launched on the back of ‘dramatic new evidence’ signifying that an establishment enemy should be viewed as uniquely despicable and targeted with ‘action’.

On April 14 Syria held parliamentary elections at 7,000 polling stations, keeping the voting open an extra five hours to accommodate the massive turnout. All were allowed to vote, even displaced Syrians from the two provinces still terrorized by Washington and Israeli backed ISIS.
Washington is angry, because Syria held elections before Washington had time to purchase its slate of politicians and organize Washington-funded NGOs to take to the streets to protest and to claim that Assad had stolen the election.

In April 2014 I first visited Syria, going to Homs and Latakia, in addition to Damascus. On each of my three subsequent trips to Syria, speaking moderate colloquial Arabic, I have been able to interact one-on-one with Syrians there, whether in markets, taxis, on the streets or in areas I visited.

This month, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation interviewed Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, Political and Media Advisor to Syria’s President. The methods used to undermine Shaaban’s message should come as no surprise.