Propaganda wars

Propaganda in modern war is perhaps the most important front of any conflict. Russia recognized this when they invaded Georgia in August last year, hijacking the country's IT infrastructure as the first stage to their attack, thus preventing Georgia from being able to get the up to the minute news from the ground out into the world, giving the Russians the propaganda advantage to carry on however they wanted.

There's a good argument to be made about the power that propaganda had in making the US 'lose' the Vietnam War, even though if you look at the conflict through military "key performance indicators", they won on every aspect.

Propaganda Poster from the Vietnam War - source

Mohammad al Durah, the "Jenin Massacre" (as reported by the BBC , the Weekly Standard , and the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs), the Israeli bombing of Qana in Lebanon in 2006 (and the subsequent rise in celebrity of Green Helmet Guy) are all just a selection of the most well known propaganda lies that have been perpetrated against Israel by an objective and non-bias media.

Green Helmet Guy doing what he does best, pimping the bodies of
dead Lebanese children for media consumption in the West.
(Any similarity with the Vietnamese propaganda poster above is pure coincidence - source)

The commonality between all these hoaxes is that a large respected world news agency (Associated Press, Reuters, AFP) has swalowed whole without any editorial oversight stories and pictures submitted by local stringers who, as we would say, have a dog in that fight, and can't be relied on at all for objectivity.

So it is with no surprise at all that when the current offensive into Gaza started, that the media rushed to blame the Israelis for the usual "disproportionate" use of force, genocide of the palestinians, blah blah blah wash rinse repeat. This video, as reported by CNN supposedly shows a doctor trying to resuscitate a 12yr old boy.




Weirdly and with no explanation, CNN pulled the video for a couple of days (after bloggers started to comment on it) and have now put it back. My first thoughts are:

• I have seen better 'medical acting' on House and ER, and even I know that CPR is useless without ventilating the lungs.
• I don't buy the "grief" of the relative when for some reason they feel that displaying the "dead" body in a living room (whilst holding it!?!?!!).
  

And would it surprise any of you to know that the entire story was filmed by the elder brother of the "victim", clearly without any hint of bias. Here is an excellent debunking of this video.

These days, the larger media organisations are being held to account for some of their reporting bias, and bloggers all over are making sure the big guys don't get away with too much, however the major narrative of "Israel bad, Palestinians good" continues and shows no sign of abating.

Extra links:

• The life and times of Green Helmet Guy
• and he's only been doing it for 10 years.
• He has his own Wikipedia page

• From the people that brought you the Mohammad al-Dura hoax, enter the 'mysterious' case of the time-travelling exploding Gazans

A final thought: