Italian justice took "only" nine years to sentence in the first instance two police officers and eleven policemen for the unprecedented violence of the No Global Forum, in Naples, in 2001.
It was a dress rehearsal for what happened in Genoa some months later.
Mass media and popular culture are powerful tools of manipulation when wielded by those skilled at waging way by way of deception. When shaping the opinion of an unsuspecting public, the star power of military leaders and sports heroes is routinely appropriated.
That duplicity was on display in February 2003 when Colin Powell gave false testimony to the U.N. Security Council that helped launch the U.S.-led invasion of a Muslim nation. Similar duplicity was deployed in May 2005 when Pakistani cricket icon Imran Khan launched from Islamabad a false story that provoked outrage at the U.S. in Muslim nations.
Since the “bread and circus” era of the Roman Empire, pop culture has proven a potent means to distract and misdirect. With the modern reach of mass media, pop culture can be deployed not just to manipulate the public’s mental state but also to promote for political office high-profile personalities such as astronauts, newscasters, war heroes and even well known comedians.
Those who induced the U.S. to wage war in Iraq on false pretenses used Secretary of State Colin Powell for that purpose when he was dispatched to the U.N. to vouch for phony intelligence. The Powell “brand” as a credible four-star general was appropriated by pro-Israeli war-planners to market the false impression that Iraq had mobile biological weapons laboratories.
By deploying a public official’s known integrity to obscure their duplicity, those complicit in this deceit discredited both Powell and the U.S. while also undermining the credibility of the U.N. The phony intelligence on which Powell relied was provided by George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence, and vouched for by Paul Joyal, reportedly Tenet’s Ashkenazi Chief of Staff.
A similar power-of-association ploy emerged two years later when the pop culture celebrity of Imran Khan was appropriated to provoke violence worldwide that damaged the image of the U.S. A global crisis commenced soon after those handling public relations for this legend of the cricket world summoned reporters to a May 6, 2005 press conference in Islamabad.
As an international sports figure, Khan’s star power and his position as a Pakistani politician directed media attention to an April 30th issue of Newsweek where Ashkenazi journalist Michael Isikoff reported that U.S. interrogators had flushed a Koran down a toilet in an attempt to exert pressure on Muslim combatants in custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Not until May 16th did Newsweek editors publish a partial retraction along with an apology in The New York Times conceding that the widely reported story was inadequately supported by the facts. By then Isikoff’s tale of Koran desecration had gone viral.
Game Theory Warfare
The story provoked massive anti-U.S. demonstrations in Pakistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Indonesia, Palestine, Jordan, Bangladesh, Sudan and Malaysia. Though the Guantanamo inmate retracted his statement, by then the story had done lasting damage to U.S. interests throughout the Islamic world while adding plausibility to the thematic Clash of Civilizations.
In game theory terms, the results were foreseeable because the reaction was mathematically predictable; the response could be projected—within an acceptable range of probabilities.Mass media and popular culture are powerful tools of manipulation when wielded by... more
Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- Protesters clashed with police at a central Tehran square on Wednesday while government supporters nearby marked the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy capture with chants of "Death to America."
Scenes in the Iranian capital turned ugly yet again as riot police and pro-government Basij militia turned out in force to quash anti-government sentiment.
At least 2,000 opposition supporters, sternly warned by authorities to stay home, marched defiantly at Haft-e-Tir Square, witnesses said. Many held up their hands in a V sign. Others shouted "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great," a slogan of protest. Police blocked all roads leading to the square, prompting massive traffic jams.
Witnesses described helmet-clad security personnel beating demonstrators with batons and firing tear gas at Haft-e-Tir Square and in a neighborhood a few kilometers north.
"I had never seen that many riot police and security personnel," a witness told CNN. "They were brought in by the busloads. As soon as crowds gathered somewhere, riot police were there within minutes."http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ixeFBxfLzaSjs8Mb8cuFmtPOT6-wD9BOQFOG0... more
